


The Library

by lizzpercush



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Cameos from everyone, Gen, Space Ferbies, The Garrison Trio has an Adventure, gratuitous pop culture references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:31:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11632308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzpercush/pseuds/lizzpercush
Summary: Things you’re allowed to do when recovering from a concussion: Nothing. Zilch. Nada.Banned from Voltron and after a week of bed rest, Pidge is ready to climb the walls. So when Allura announces an Away Mission to the Library of Attaleia, Pidge is determined to go. After all, the Library is quiet, completely empty, and full of alien tech. She might not be allowed to fly the Green Lion or leave the Castle, but no one will notice if she tags along.





	1. Chapter 1

 

(@[Mintless](http://feedthemintless.tumblr.com/post/163494368349/the-library-kya-here-come-my-piece-for-the))

...

_Day 1: Lance’s aim Sucks._

After the haunted Castle mess training had new rules. Shiro implemented the Buddy System. No more solo gladiator matches without a spotter, Keith. No training after 8 pm Earth time. Make sure you turn the lights off when you leave the room, and always keep a comm on you. The general amount of laps, pull ups, and stamina training reps also increased.

During her downtime Pidge picked obstacle courses to run. The Alteans had training simulations other than Don’t Get Hit, and Solve the Maze with the Power of Friendship. There was also Collect all the Tokens or Get Shocked, or, Altean Pacers. They were like the regular dreaded stamina tests. You ran from point A to point B and had to cross the line before the timer ran out. Except the floor disappeared if you lagged behind.

Today Pidge wanted to practice navigating terrain with only her bayard and no armor. So she selected the token collection minigame. She had to grab all the shiny, metal cylinders placed around her half of the training floor before time ran out. Beat the puzzle and win a cool prize.

Per the buddy system, Pidge asked Hunk to man the control suite. Lance overheard and volunteered his services as moral support and Paladin Cheerleader. Hunk agreed, and Lance offered obnoxious encouragement from the sidelines. Halfway through her run, Lance began pulling out training drones and extra equipment. The last time she looked he was kicking a drone from one knee to knee like a soccer ball.

Pillars of various heights spiked over hovering platforms and an uneven cubed floor. Golden tokens scattered throughout the area lurking below platforms and at odd angles. Of the thirty tokens she had three left. Her next target was at the top of the tallest pillar at the farthest edge of the room. Her platform straddled the border of the active training deck and the inactive half.

Pidge gauged the area from her perch halfway between the ceiling and the floor. It wouldn’t be a clean swing. She climbed up a block and retraced her path. Ok, one swing would take her about a third of the way closer to her goal.

On his half of the training deck, Lance pulled out some kind of bat, and it looked like he was playing croquet? Golf? She shook off the distraction and refocused. She could make the swing.

The hook nestled into the ceiling with a reassuring thunk. Pidge pulled string, testing the line’s tension, and grinned. Step aside Tarzan. There was a new vine swinger in town. She bent her knees and prepared to launch.

“Pidge, look out!”

A white blur smacked her right temple. Pidge flailed and loosened her grip on her bayard activating the grapple’s release. The line reeled in jerking her forward and into the air. Her bayard jumped out of her grip and zipping off through the air. She tumbled off the platform head over heels with a gut wrenching, “Aaah!”

Smack.

Downward velocity paused, horizontal velocity zero. Possible cause…inertia after smacking into the landscape. Then gravity decided to work again, and Pidge fell the last eight feet and collapsed into a Pidge puddle.

…ow…

Green lions chased stars and binary around her head. This was not part of the plan.

“Training Simulation Deactivated.”

…

“Well, the good news is Number 5’s brain isn’t bleeding,” Coran said. His eyes flitted between the holodisplay’s medical readouts and Pidge. “There’s some deterioration in her synapses, but that’s to be expected after a knock to the head.”

Shiro stood by Coran with a clear view of the screen and Pidge. Arms crossed Keith shadowed Shiro. Also near the pod, Hunk had one arm slung around Lance’s shoulders. Lance drooped under the weight. His head hung low, and his shoulders slumped,.

Allura led Pidge through visual tracking exercises. Although dazed Pidge participated in track the finger and how many fingers am I holding up?

“No fractures in the skull and no leaking fluids.” Coran said. “Her eyes are open, and she’s responding to commands. Alert but dizzy. Question, Number One?”

“How’s her blood pressure?” Shiro asked.

A new window popped up. “Level. Her heart’s ticking away nice and steady.”

Shiro nodded. “Alright, my training for the Kerberos mission covered medical emergencies including concussions. I recommend bed rest for the next day, and we should observe her for the next twelve hours. We need to keep an eye on her blood pressure, alertness—,”

“That should be easy,” Hunk said. “Hey Pidge, how’re you feeling?”

Pidge winced. “Do you have to be so loud? The lights are already too bright.”

“We can dim the lights,” Allura said and shot Hunk a look. “A lot has happened. Pidge needs rest without distractions.”

Lance lifted his head. “Wait, should we let her sleep in a pod? Shouldn’t she be horizontal for blood pressure?”

Coran rubbed his chin. “Healing higher level brain functions is delicate work. I can’t guarantee the pods have adapted to human neurophysiology to repair the damage. Not without side effects or complications. You’re fragile creatures, humans.”

After a contemplative stare, Coran began opening a new set of screens. “Well Number 5, for the sake of your primitive neural synapses, we’ll have to let you heal the old fashioned way. With rest and time.”

A floor plan appeared onscreen, and Allura’s face brightened.

“I see. The Castle has a healing ward down the corridor. It branches off the Infirmary, and we can adjust its lighting to a comfortable level.”

“As long as it’s dark and quiet, I don’t care,” Pidge grumbled.

Allura beamed. “We can handle that.”

…

_Day 10: The terror continues. Also, Hunk’s scoop and carry technique’s effectiveness has increased. Update his file and increase personal stealth efforts._

There was something unique about being carried like a sack of potatoes. Technically Hunk held Pidge in a fireman’s carry. If she propped herself up on her elbows, she had an excellent view of the hallway. If she didn’t, then she had a great view of Hunk’s frontal plane, specifically the dorsal side.

So this is what it’s like to be a giant. Hunk would make an excellent base in a game of pool chicken, she decided.

If only… The thought sputtered and stalled. Crap, not again.

Pidge squirmed and tried to wedge her hand into her short’s pocket. The band of pressure across her knees tightened.

“Pidge, what are you doing?”

Pidge planted a hand firmly between Hunk’s shoulder blades and strained upward.

“Just trying to grab my phone.”

Oh, ow. Another thing dangling from Hunk’s shoulder provided was a new appreciation for the sensation of blood rushing to her head. Her fingers curled around her phone in time for a new headache to tap her right between the eyes.

“Ok, put me down Hunk. Now. It hurts.”

A quiet eep may have escaped into the air, but Hunk ducked down and set her down like she barely weighed anything. Well at five foot two inches and a hundred and five pounds soaking wet, she probably didn’t register as a heavy load. Not like it mattered. What did matter was that the tightness building in her temples didn’t get worse. Success. And if she was lucky Hunk wouldn’t start—

“Pidge, I’m so sorry. What hurts?”

–hovering.

“I didn’t jostle you, did I? I thought you’d be ok if I picked you up. It’s not like a week ago when you turned into a gremlin and whimpered if anyone turned on any lights, or talked too loud or for too long, or kept you from sleeping. And you’ve been a lot more active the last few days. I mean, Keith found you wandering the halls a few days ago which was the farthest we’ve seen you from your room in days. But you’re still banned from the labs and from ‘Communing’ until Coran gives the all clear, so it seemed faster to take you to him to check if you could–,”

Pidge tuned him out and stabbed the onscreen icons. Of all the unbearable mother hens aboard the Castle, Hunk took the cake. He outdid Shiro in mother henning. Shiro, the king of deflection and concern. Really, everyone got worked up about the oddest things and gave her the worst headaches in the process.

“Will you stop coddling me?”

Hunk paused. “Pidge, you have a concussion.”

“Had a concussion. I’m healing ‘nicely if inefficiently in comparison to the superior Altean biology according’ to Coran.”

“I don’t think Coran said superior. Just slower compared to the average Altean in your age group.”

Planner, she was looking for her planner. Because that’s where she left her day’s notes and task list. And warnings.

“Hunk, I got hit in the head with a training drone. Everyone’s taken worse hits during training.”

The current date blinked up at her.

“You also swung into the training maze’s hard light pillar constructs. Then fell eight feet and wouldn’t respond. You were conscious but not all there. Plus, you weren’t wearing your armor or your helmet.”

Get knocked in the head, George of the Jungle into a hard light pillar, be too dazed to respond, and everyone starts hovering. A girl can scorch off her own eyebrows or get buried under a mountain of Altean shoe boxes, and no one cares. But one bump to the head sentenced her to bed rest and grounded her from the lab, the Green Lion, and the Green Lion’s hanger. Not to mention training, patrol, and missions. Well, challenging Lance to an honor duel and calling Shiro 'Cottonpuff' might have helped. The point still stood. One bump to the head and Allura vanished the Castle to the edge of the galaxy, and Shiro cut back Voltron training. Yippee.

“No, wait. You’re in pain. Do you need a pain killer? A nap? It might be safe enough to stick you in a pod. Maybe. Coran wasn’t very clear about why we couldn’t stick you in the pod.”

“Hunk, too loud!”

“Oh.” He dropped down to a whisper. “Sorry.”

Pidge scowled down at her task list and the unchanging lines of text.

_> Day 10: Avoid everyone. They won’t let you work. Find your laptop._

Find your laptop. Great, but what was she supposed to be working on? Stupid headache. Stupid memory. Stupid post concussion syndrome. Between the hovering and inability to focus, she couldn’t do anything.

“What did you need your laptop for?”

Pidge looked up at Hunk. He’d bent partway over to peer over her shoulder at her phone. She sighed and pocketed the phone.

“I don’t know. I left my room to do something. Grab my laptop, and then…”

Then she’d forgotten. When the hall branched between the kitchen or toward the bridge, she’d paused and looked from one hall to the other and didn’t know where she’d wanted to go. Or why. Then Hunk walked past and scooped her up.

Hunk nodded. “We could find Coran. Get a checkup. Or something for the headache.”

Like that didn’t have a predictable outcome.

“There’s a 75 percent chance Coran’s going to say rest. After I’ve sat through a barrage of medical tests and scans.”

Oh, Coran would do the check up. The entire concussion incident had turned into a case study for how adolescent humans recovered from mild brain trauma. Coran took the pods inability to heal her concussion as a personal challenge. He had started collecting data on her daily healing.

He insisted the tests were essential for calibrating the pods, so they could treat similar injuries in the future. This meant Pidge got to wear Altean medical devices and get scanned by a suite of medical equipment. At least the Alteans seemed to have mastered the art of noninvasive medical procedures.

Pidge lifted her chin and looked Hunk in the eye. “I’m not going.”

Hunk looked back, calm and steady. “You don’t have too. If you did, we could grab Shiro. Coran says you’re healing well, and you can ask to visit Green.”

Something slotted into place at that thought. Visiting Green, of course. Find your laptop, visit Green, and work. Pidge smiled.

“Of course, I was going to visit Green.” Her eye brows puckered, and a scatter of puzzle pieces clicked together. “I wanted to say hi. Do you think they’ll go for it? I mean, staying away for a week and not training isn’t good for bonding with my lion or forming Voltron. But they said I had to avoid straining myself.”

Physically or mentally, because communicating with a psychic robot lion strained an injured mind. If active mental contact with a Lion caused unwelcome strain, then forming Voltron amounted to mental clobbering. Both activities fell under the five quickest ways to make a concussion worse.

Hunk shrugged. “If you get Coran and Shiro in the same room, and get a good report, then you can mention how much you miss visiting Green. Oh, if you used the big, sad eyes you pulled on Keith two days ago then they won’t have the heart to say no.”

She had managed to convince Keith to swing by the kitchen for a snack after he’d caught her dozing, uh, assessing the structural integrity of a wall. She’d gotten a cookie out of that trip.

“Hunk, you might be onto something.”

...

“Absolutely not.”

Perched on a chair and biomonitor wrapped around her arm, Pidge looked up at Coran and Shiro. Of the two spectators only Coran was in the room. Shiro watched from his control station on the bridge. Allura had snagged him earlier in the day, but he’d promised to watch over a video call. His window nestled by the display that charted her vitals, including her heart rate.

She thought back to evenings at home when she’d sit next to her dad. She would rest her head against his shoulder, then look up wide-eyed and earnest and ask for a favor. Pidge was very, very good at many things. She excelled at wrapping her dad around her finger. Time to transfer the principle.

“But I miss her,” she said. She focused on Shiro. His facial features indicated sympathy yet firmness. She looked at him with extra wide and sad eyes. He wavered.

A bright light pierced the stare off. Pidge yelped and jerked away.

“Sensitivity to light, check,” Coran muttered. He clicked off the penlight and tucked it into a pocket. “How’s the headache?”

“What headache?”

Coran frowned and looked at the screen. The vital monitors graphs showed a spike, and a few glowed in mauve. “The one pounding away inside your head.”

“It’s not pounding.”

“Oh? So you do have a headache.”

“No.”

“Do you have a headache, Pidge?” Shiro asked. At the silent pause he nodded. “How’s your memory? Is the task list helping?”

Pidge slumped over and pouted. “I still forget things, and I still get headaches. Sometimes randomly and others after I concentrate for too long.” She grimaced at the look on Coran’s face. “Let me guess. No Green.”

“Not if you’re having trouble concentrating and not while the headaches last.”

Because generally it wasn’t a good idea for four other people to root around in your head when healing or in a delicate mental shape. Just because you knew your limits didn’t mean a well-meaning visitor wouldn’t break a mental window and knock you IQ down ten or twenty points. Apparently.

She lifted her chin and stared them down. “If I was back on Earth, they’d let me go back to school by now. I wouldn’t be doing any physical activity or drills, and my homework load would be lightened, but they’d let me back into class.”

Coran closed the screens. “I see the problem. Still, I prescribe rest. Ah-ah, you’re a Paladin of Voltron. No pouting. You’re still not in a position to be training or going on joyrides.”

“I don’t want to fly. I want to visit Green. Hang out in her hangar without everyone thinking I need to sleep or herded to medical.” Her hands clenched her knees. “I’m so bored. You guys won’t let me do anything or go anywhere, and I can only stare at the same four walls and eat and sleep for so long. I can feel my brain turning into mush.”

“No, I’m pretty sure that already happened,” Coran said. “Right now it’s reassembling itself, solidifying.”

Pidge gave Coran her grumpiest pout, but over Shiro chuckled. Two of the mice ran up his shoulder and squeaked, waving their paws. Shiro looked between the two, nodded, and looked out at Pidge and Coran.

“I’ve got to go. Allura’s looking for me. Anything I can help with before I go?”

Pidge grumbled and hunkered down. Coran gave her an assessing look then turned back to Shiro. “No, I’m about done. I’ll wrap up.”

Shiro eyed Pidge with a trace of uncertainty. He didn’t like her particularly mutinous expression. Well, tough.

“I’ll leave it to you.”

The window closed, and Coran started packing up the medical equipment. He unhooked sensors stuck to her skin and guided the floating diagnostic screens back to their berths around the room.

“You’re not the only one going stir crazier than a pack of yelmors stuck in a klanmuirl’s cave,” He said. “Everyone’s humming. Shiro’s drilling the rest of the Paladins trying to bleed off excess energy. Allura and the mice are sliding down banisters and going on hover chair adventures. She should be resting. Much like you. You’re sneaking around. So, I’ve decided to help distract everyone before we twazzle each other’s spark out.”

A large sack slumped against the far wall. Coran rifled around inside sending up a chorus of clinks and clutters. “Aha, gotcha.”

He presented his prize with a flourish.

“You’re not the only one who’s gotten restless. So I took the liberty of going through the Castle’s library.”

Interest caught Pidge leaned forward.“What library? You have a library? Where? How big is it? What—?”

Coran shushed her. “Easy, Number 5. In order: it’s a part of the Altean Royal Library and Royal Archives, one floor above the swimming pool, about the same size as the ballroom, and it’s a mix of physical and holorecords. With access to the RA&A databanks, it can access any topic the crew could need. Histories, star maps, philosophy texts, intergalactic treaties, and treatises for thousands of star systems and civilizations. It holds everything needed for diplomatic visits to…”

Here Coran trailed off. His face had lit up through his speech, but here at the end the light dimmed into something wistful. Pidge knew the look. She’d seen it in her face and her mother’s face. It was the sort of look one got when reminded that something beautiful and beloved and lost. Grief.

“…evading and outlasting hostile entities. On Altea we strove to explore and learn. To go, observe, record, and share what we’ve learned with others. Curiosity. Exploration. Dreaming, and striving to see what we could no and learn. That’s how the lions, Voltron, came to be really. We followed a shooting star and dreamed.”

His shoulders bowed, and Coran sighed. “But Altea’s gone. After ten thousand years all that remains of Altea is here with the Princess and the Castle and the Lions. After ten thousand years this library is truly a historical archive. A testament to the time before the Galra Empire.”

“Not the place to research current events, or the current galactic sociopolitical environment,” Pidge hedged. She wasn't quite sure what to say. Not sure what would help.

Coran chuckled. “The Princess said something very similar. No, not anymore. It’s more of a museum now. An archeologist’s dream.” He shook himself, and his usual good cheer began to resurface. “Enough about that. Now in the Royal Library there was a box meant to be shipped out to—oh, the name escapes me—but it was meant to supplement an existing display of Altean culture. The Princess found a log that included the shipping manifest and helped me dig it out of storage. Tada!”

A golden sphere glistened in Coran’s hands. A spider web of lines ran across the surface. Some lines arced and curved. Others ran in straight axis lines, separating the surface into quadrants. Circles dotted the surface and acted as center points for the network. Or they were strung along a line like dewdrops on a spider web. All told, the sphere was about the size of a grapefruit.

“What is it?” Pidge asked. Her eyes focused on the sphere.

“This is an Altean Puzzle Sphere.” He passed the sphere over to Pidge.

Puzzle gripped in hand Pidge scooted off the exam table and hovered in front of Coran. Her eyes shone.

“How’s it work?”

Coran reached back into the bag and pulled out a second puzzle.

“Is that- is that a dodecahedron?” Pidge leaned in closer and started counting the sides.

“A what?”

“A dodecahedron,” Pidge replied. Yep, there they were, all twelve of them. “It’s a 3-dimensional figure made up of pentagons that has twelve faces.” Twelve faces, thirty edges, and twenty vertices, and made up some of the trickier Rubik cubes she’d ever seen.

“Hm, I guess so.”

Streaks of jade blue peeked out between the different plates. Coran pressed the center on a face and started twisting and moving the plates.

Mouth hanging open and eyes wide, Pidge leaned forward. Coran wasn’t just moving the surface plating. As he continued the puzzle unfurled like an onion revealing internal layers. Coran spun, plucked, slid, and even tickled the shifting pieces.

“Altean puzzle cubes. They’re supposed to make you think in 4-dimensions. They respond to different stimuli, pressure, and the position of the plates. The more difficult puzzles took time, physical, and aerial position into account. Why, during the 277th Puzzle Cracking Competition, the final puzzle stage unlocked if opened at the 15th minute of the 20th hour. At the same time the puzzle had to be above the southern continent’s capital and within a specific subsection of Altea’s upper atmosphere to solve it.

“That’s not even accounting for the puzzles that need the stage to shift within a specific tick at a specific time and date. Only three puzzle teams figured that one out, and well, the rest were hopping mad. According to my grandfather, the puzzle solving spot was near a juniberry patch frequented by Xznly Squiwl. They were quite effective at driving off most of the competitors and injured two of the remaining teams. After that new limits and precautions were placed on the competition puzzle makers.”

On a roll Coran barely paused to take a breath. “And puzzle cubes that required adrenaline rushes to proceed to the next puzzle stage were banned. A shame almost. Sometimes you can’t know what you’re capable of until you exceed your limits. Or succeed within limiting circumstances. Oh, here we go.”

A click echoed through the room and a sound like a lever falling into place followed. Then the puzzle shone a brilliant blue and floated out of Coran’s hand and hovered midair. The displaced pieces spun and shifted back to their original form. The different levels separated and spread apart like repelling magnets.

“Here comes my favorite part,” Coran said.

The center of the dodecahedron shone like a star. Then the light dimmed, and a small bundle fell into Coran’s waiting hands. With another click the puzzle shone and pulled itself together. All the pieces reassembled, and the puzzle dropped. Pidge swooped down and caught it.

“That. Was so. Cool!” She spun to face Coran. “I want all of them.”

She’d stumbled across a goldmine of alien rubik cubes. Of course she wanted them all.

“Do they all have something hidden inside?”

“Usually,” Coran said. “Most of the beginner level puzzles have a prize inside. Candy, small sums of money, or a message. In the intermediate puzzles, especially if it’s part of a competition, the prize will be a clue to the next puzzle. Or it’ll resolve into a puzzle piece to build into a greater shape. Some masters of the craft have built statues and complex artwork out of completed puzzle pieces. But I selected the beginner and a few intermediate puzzles. No tricks involved to solve it, only patience and cleverness. After so many years who knows what’s inside?”

Pidge nodded and picked up the puzzle sphere. She traced on finger along the cool, metal surface. “What prize did you get?”

Coran turned the white packet upside down and shook. Small pebble sized objects rained down. Coran picked one up and sniffed.

“Is that? No.” He peeled off a white waxy sheet and licked the purple surface. He gasped. “I can’t believe it. Gooey chewy sour juniberry taffy! I haven’t had any in years.”

Unwrapping the rest of the paper, Coran threw the taffy in his mouth and grimaced. Lips puckered and eyes blown wide, he chewed then shivered.

Pidge looked up from her puzzle. “Are you ok, Coran?”

Coran worked his jaw and shuddered. Tears in his eyes, he nodded. “It’s as sour as I remembered. I must show Allura.”

Coran scooped up the pile of candy and threw the sack of puzzles over his shoulder. Before leaving he grabbed the dodecahedron out of Pidge’s hands.

“Alright, Number 5. I’m going to take these to Princess Allura and pass out the puzzles to the rest of the Paladins. Maybe some entertainment will keep everyone alive and shizzled. When you finish with the sphere puzzle come see me, and I’ll trade you another one. Oh, Princess Allura’s scheduled a meeting in half a varga for the entire crew. I guess exploring the Royal Library gave her an idea. Report to the bridge in half a varga. Oh, you’re still on medical leave, so no strenuous physical or regular physical activity. See you then.”

Pidge looked from Coran’s retreating form to her newest challenge. She cracked her knuckles. Half an hour, huh? Plenty of time.

_> Task List: Solve the Altean sphere puzzle, win cool prizes, and trade Coran for another one._


	2. Chapter 2

 

Half a varga later Pidge slouched in her station on the bridge and scowled at her latest challenge. Half an hour. In half an hour she’d solved multiple Rubik cubes, hacked and downloaded Galra databases and written worms and algorithms to extract and translate that data into something meaningful. But no, in half an hour she was still matching wits with a stubborn alien Rubik sphere. In fact all she’d managed to accomplish was locating the puzzle’s reset button. She had managed to unlock the mechanism that allowed the surface plates to move and figured out the circular nodes unlocked different sections at different pressures and pushed in at different depths, but as soon as she got confident that she’d figured out how to pull back the first layer, the puzzle would click and reset back to its original state.

The building tension headache made her want to chuck the annoying thing across the room or yell. Somehow, she didn’t think Coran would let her solve the puzzle if she started throwing it around. Unless velocity played a factor in unlocking part of the puzzle.

Across the room Allura worked at her podium. She looked better, not as drained from healing the Balmera and the pinched look she’d worn after piloting the Castle away from the dying star had begun to fade. Today her hair flowed down her back like a fluffy cloud, and she wore her princess dress. A very official look that reflected her royal position.

Shiro stood by her and spoke with Allura in low tones. He seemed calm, but he was also wearing his armor outside of training, and held his helmet tucked under his arm. Pidge checked the time. Yes, training for the healthy, whole, and non-concussed had finished over an hour ago.

Scooting forward Pidge squinted at the screens hovering around Allura. If Allura was dressed fancy, and Shiro had his armor on, then they might be going to an actual planet, or somewhere the Voltron Alliance representatives would need to look professional and important.

No sign of Coran with his bag of goodies.  Keith hovered at the edge of Shiro’s shadow. He had a golden polygon tucked under one arm. But no sign of Hunk or of Lance.

If half a varga meant half a varga then Coran might be tracking them down. He probably started in the kitchen, recruited Hunk, and then moved on to find _Mr. Tailor_.

“That’s a scary face.”

Pidge did not jump three inches into the air. Because, of course, she’d heard Keith’s silent approach. And the sudden lurch didn’t renew her tension headache. No, no, no, because that would suck.

“What face?” She schooled her features and tucked away any sign of pain.

“Your face,” Keith said. “Your eyebrows were pinched on top of your nose, and your jaw stuck out. I saw teeth.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, you did.” Keith frowned. “It looked like this.”

And Keith pulled a face so ridiculous, Pidge barely kept her giggle in. A smile twitched then slipped fully out.

“No, I didn’t,” she claimed, barely taming her smile.

Keith frowned, and his stare pierced her as if probing for weakness.

“How’s your head?”

“Hurts.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Bored.”

“Are they going to let you train?”

“No.”

He nodded. “That sucks. Any idea what the meeting’s about?”

Check-in complete. The right arm has successfully spoken to the left arm. Of all the mother hens on board, Keith was the frankest and made the least fuss. He did have the odd habit of silently showing his moral support while lurking in a distant but visible corner. When Lance wasn’t around.

“I think Allura got an idea after visiting the onboard library. She looks very official.”

“So does Shiro. Here’s a library in here?”

Pidge thought back to her conversation with Coran. “Yeah, but it’s more like a museum now, and out of date. Coran said it’s above the swimming pool.”

Keith’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his bangs. “There’s a pool—”

“Ah, Allura, I found them.”

Bag of goodies slung over one shoulder, Coran strolled in whistling a jaunty tune. Hunk followed close behind. His tongue poked out between his teeth, and he frowned at a metallic sea urchin looking…thing. And behind him followed...

“Are you sure throwing it isn’t part of the problem-solving, Coran? Back on Earth percussive maintenance has a long and respected history across the planet.”

“If I catch you throwing antiquities, Lance, then you’ll be joining me scrubbing out the cryopods for the next month.”

Well, that answered one question.

Now that everyone had appeared, Allura, Princess and Commander of All She Surveyed, got down to business.

“Paladins, thank you for coming.”  Allura smile and looked around at the assembled ring. “The past few weeks have been difficult. My recovery after healing the Balmera, the Galra crystal compromising several of the Castle’s systems, and Pidge’s injury have left us taking a step back from our goal. No longer. Pidge and I are on the mend, and Coran and I have confirmed the last influence of the Galra crystal has been repaired. We are ready to get back out there. I have found a lead for us to pursue.”

Placing her hands on the main controls, Allura opened the ship’s star map. The map spiraled outward and filled the room.

Pidge sucked in a breath and greedily devoured the sight. There was so much to see. So many galaxies to cross and so many places to search.

Awe touched murmurs filled the air. The stars shone brightly in everyone’s eyes. Coran took the sight in stride, and Allura turned serious.

“One of our greatest obstacles is a lack of information. Most of Earth and humankind have not left your solar system, and most of Coran’s and my galactic knowledge are ten thousand years out of date. In that time the Galra Empire has risen. We need information. We need histories of the last millennia, which of our allies held out against the Galra expansion and for how long? How large is the Galra Empire? What are the current galactic events? Who are our potential allies, and we need an accurate map of the Empire. Current trade routes, major port planets, what civilizations rose, which fell, and what endured. We need to know.”

“Uh, Princess?” Lance raised his hand and flashed a smile. “Where are we going to find this information? If Earth’s history is anything to go by, then Zarkon’s going to have heavily edited histories available for everyone. He won’t tolerate anyone making him or his empire look bad. Anyone who could or did speak out, well, if they’re lucky they disappeared before someone else made them disappear.”

Hunk bumped shoulders with Lance. “Yeah, it’d be tricky trying to find actual facts. Everything easily available will be _all hail the glory of the Galra Empire, may the Emperor’s reign last a thousand years._ And anyone who doesn’t fall in line, well, they’re probably filling those camps the Holts were sent to.”

Or dead, Pidge thought. Dead aliens tell no tales.

A shadow had fallen over Shiro’s face. He’d crossed his arms over his chest, and silently took in the discussion. His eyes though seemed far away as if wisps of memories played behind his eyes. Pidge recognized the look. Most of the Paladins knew it when they saw it. You could almost see the gladiator rings behind them. She supposed Zarkon included slanderous traitors and defamators as criteria for gladiator fight participation in addition to primitive scientists from an uncontacted dust ball.

Keith, who’d been keeping a sharp eye on Shiro, turned to Allura. “You already thought of that,” he said. That caught Lane and Hunk’s attention. “We’ve been keeping beyond the fringe of Galra space for weeks. You wouldn’t send us into Galra space down one lion and Voltron. You’ve already found a place.”

Allura beamed at Keith, blue eyes twinkling. “Indeed. We need unbiased information. Somewhere out of the Galra’s reach. Somewhere neutral if not isolated.” The map shifted zooming in on a cluster of blue stars. “We need the Library of Attaleia.”

Hunk started. “The library of where now?”

“The Library of Attaleia located in the great city of Attaleia on the planet Sidera part of the PL-7 star system.” Allura shifted the star map to the presumably PL-7 system. Seven shining stars stood out from the cluster, and three planets rotated around the cluster’s primary star. “The PL-7 system is located on the edge of known space and has served as a connecting point and trade port for other isolated systems. It also has the advantage of being one of the last bastions in civilized space. Long has it straddled between settled and unexplored space.”

“It’s still been ten thousand years,” Lance said. “How do we know it isn’t a Galra territory or province?”

“We can’t know for sure.” Coran stepped forward. “But that area of space is known for turbulent solar weather. The space within the system is calm, but it isn’t unheard for the solar storms to cut PL-7 and its connecting systems off from the rest of the galaxy for decades at a time. Sometimes even a century or more. That would give the Siderans an advantage in building defenses. It also makes it almost impossible to get into the system during the storm season. Although getting out has never bothered the Siderans. Like they say, where there’s a Sideran there’s a way out of a black hole.”

“To put it lightly,” Allura said. “Zarkon could throw fleets at the system, and during storm season cruiser after cruiser would fall. No outer planetary force has conquered any of PL-7’s planets.”

Hunk hummed in thought. Arms crossed, Lance said, “What makes their library so great?”

Allura clapped her hands together. “Because of the extended periods of isolation the people of Sidera have a long policy of collecting all new, uncatalogued holovolumes, books, maps, crystal drives, other data storage units, and adding them to their Library. They return copies of the data, but keep the originals for study. Their library is The Library, one of the greatest stores and collections of knowledge in that quadrant of space. Altea has—had—a long tradition of intellectual exchange and free inquiry with Sidera. Historically, our planets have had very warm relations. Everything we could possibly need to know about the universe will be there.”

Pidge would say this about her fellow teammates. The prospect of visiting their first and one of the biggest alien public library, well, had reduced them to wonderstruck silence. She had an open mouthed, helpless smile on her face. Pidge, well, she imagined that this was what getting smacked in the face with a fish felt like only in the best possible way.

An entire library stuffed to the gills with knowledge of countless systems, galaxies even. Alien worlds, alien technology, alien science. Alien physics and engineering just a flight away.

_I’m going. I’m_ so _going._

“How are we going to get there?” Pidge asked.

“Normally, we would have to account for the system’s solar cycle, the solar storm seasons, and try to contact the system’s authorities for permission to enter. But given the state of the universe,” Allura placed her hands on the bridge controls and shone within a pillar of light. Out on the holoscreen a wormhole gleamed into life. “We are traveling by teladuv.”

This was a horrible idea. As in this could go horribly wrong in many different ways.

“Maybe we should get in the Lions,” Pidge said. She glanced around the bridge. “Or form Voltron? Somehow, I don’t think the Siderans will react well when an Altean warship pops up in their sovereign aerospace.”

Allura waved her off. “That might be a concern if we appeared within planetary orbit. However, the wormhole will take us to the edge of their system. From there we will open the Altean diplomatic envoy channel and announce our intentions.” Allura looked over her Paladins and smiled. “If needed Coran, Shiro, and I will go down as a diplomatic contact party.”

“Yeesh, it’s a public library,” Lance chimed in. “Maybe we should park the Castle behind a moon. Are there any gas giants in system? More importantly, and I can’t believe I’ve never asked this before, do we have warp drive?”

Hunk appeared to run that sentence back through his head, grimaced, and smacked Lance upside the head.

Keith, nose wrinkled like he’d just smelled something strange, asked, “Was that a Star Trek reference?”

Lance wrinkled his nose right back. “What about it? You can’t tell me you don’t want to hide the Castle in a cloud and have Voltron majestically rise out of the mist like an avenging angel and impressing the masses?”

From the look on Keith’s face he seemed torn between agreeing that, yeah, that seemed cool in theory but ultimately annoyed with Lance’s tone. Shiro stepped between them before the conversation escalated.

“Focus boys. Allura and I discussed this. We’ll approach Sidera from a distance and hail their representatives. If all goes well, there will be a brief diplomatic visit to negotiate access to the planet and a potential recruiting run for the Voltron Alliance. That being said, I want you in your lions standing by in the hangars. We might need them to establish our bona fides. Any questions?”

Yes, she had a bunch of questions, but Pidge held her tongue and waited.

After a brief scan around the room, Shiro nodded. “Alright, dismissed. Suit up and head to your lion.”

The circle broke. Coran and Allura focused on their control panels and opened the diplomatic channel to begin hailing the planet. Not to mention monitoring the long range scanners for activity.

Pidge focused on keeping her face blank and moving toward the hall. Her armor was in her room, but a quick detour to suit up wouldn’t set her back at all. Besides, if no one noticed her heading towards Green, then they couldn’t tell her no. After all, Shiro said they’d need the lions, and every Voltron story worth its historical salt told about the _five_ lions of Voltron, not four. They needed her in Green for this.

Plan set, Pidge ambled towards the exit, head bent over her puzzle until an annoying voice threw a wrench in her plan.

“Wait, does this plan include Pidge? I thought she was still out on medical recovery?”

_Lance._

For a moment, Pidge chewed on her lip and went over her options. If she didn’t react and no one clarified, she could still con her way back into space. Just take deep even breathes and unflare your nostrils, girl.

She was calm. Calm and unconcerned.

Shiro sighed. “Sorry, Pidge, but Coran hasn’t medically cleared you. You’re still benched.”

_No._

She spun around. “But Shiro—,”

“I know, Pidge. But until you’re cleared no training, no missions, no Voltron. We need you rested and at a hundred percent.”

For a moment she considered arguing, laying out her points, and logic, again. But it wouldn’t change their minds. She was benched. No Green Lion fun times for her.

Pure empathy shone in Shiro’s face when he walked up and clasped her shoulder.

“I know it’s hard. But we need your best out there. Take the time you need to heal.”

Maybe her gloom was clear to everyone because Shiro gave her an encouraging smile and squeezed her shoulder.

Let no one say she couldn’t take a hint. She may thoroughly disregard said hints and go her merry way, but she did recognize them when she saw them. Most of the time. Like now.

Pidge turned and began trudging back to her room. Back to another solid block of hours filled with staring at the ceiling, forgetting what she was doing, and wondering where her laptop was. While everyone else got to fly their lions and Be Great. Without her.

So when her path took her past the locus of all her troubles for the past ten days, Pidge couldn’t help herself.

“Thanks a lot, Lance.”

Lance, looking like Keith had shoved a lemon down his throat, shrugged. “What? You’re hurt. I’m trying to help.”

Pidge scoffed. “The only thing you help with is giving me headaches.”

“You have a concussion.”

“ _Had_ a concussion.”

 “Nuance. You shouldn’t be flying. What if you end up knocking your head again? It’s difficult to be a genius if the wrong spin of G-forces scrambles your brains, Pidge. You could get a worse concussion and get benched for longer.”

“And whose fault was it the first time, Tailor?”

Lance froze mouth open and finger pointing towards her. His face clouded masking away hurt.

“That’s _enough_ cadets. Knock it off!”

Leave it to Shiro to step in and defuse the situation. Scowling, Pidge pivoted from Lance to Shiro. “He started it.”

Arms crossed Shiro met her outrage with a look of unyielding authority. No amount of pity parties or puppy eyes would sway him.

“Then I’ll finish it,” he said. “You need to cool down, Pidge.”

Never let it be said that Pidge was cowed by unflinching authority. She wouldn’t have gotten into the Garrison much less into outer space if she’d meekly bowed her head and listened to everything an authority figure told her she needed to do. Granted she aimed more towards subtle maneuvering then losing her temper in Keith like explosions at the drop of a hat. Well, as long as no one brought up her family.

The point still stood. Katie Holt did what she wanted and listened to who she wanted when she wanted. Not even Shiro’s high empathy and competence would spare him.

Allura had other plans. Her voice cut through the tension and grabbed everyone’s attention. It even managed to crack through and snag Pidge’s attention.

“Pull Sidera up on the long range scanners, Coran. I’ll send out the hail again.”

“Right, Princess.”

Lance sidled over to Allura. “Something wrong, Beautiful?”

“No one is responding to our hail.” Allura shifted her focus from the screens before her to the main view screen. “We knew this was possible. Technology changes over time. They might not be able to receive our signal. Coran, scan all frequencies.”

“Scanning all frequencies.”

The image on the main screen was pixilated and blurred. But as Coran worked it slowly began to clear. “Alright, there was some interference coming from the primary star, but all frequencies have been scanned, and…no response.”

“None?”

“None,” he agreed. “Zip. No response. And there aren’t any active frequencies or frequencies currently in use between the systems, within the cluster, or even between or within the planets themselves. Just,” He flapped his arms. “Silence.”

“From Sidera or just Attaleia City?” Lance asked.

“From anywhere. There is no significant radio, sonar, radar, digital, crystalloid, subspace or any sort of artificial signal being given off on Sidera or any of the system’s planets. Just silence.”

“Silence on Attaleia,” Allura echoed.

From there Allura and Coran confirmed their results. Yes, the scanners were working properly. No, the results weren’t changing. At one point when the interference kept clouding the ability for the long range scanners to let them look at Sidera, Allura began a cautious flight into the system. The proximity began clearing the blurred visual readings until Sidera hung directly in the main holoscreen.

Hunk squinted. “Are those craters?”

Lance jumped in. “More importantly is it just me or did Tatooine and Hoth have a fling?”

For all Allura’s claims that Sidera was a lush planet fed by underground springs of water and flush with natural resources and rolling hills and woodlands, the planet looked desiccated. The poles were massive, glacial mountain ranges of glaciers spiked and visible from space that covered two-thirds of the planet. The free strip of planet nestled between the two glacial Polar Regions was a lifeless tan and deeply pockmarked as if the planet’s crust was scarred. Nothing green or vaguely resembling a body of water remained.

Within the planet’s atmosphere and outer orbit was a cloud of debris and trash.

“I can’t believe it,” Allura whispered. “Even seeing it now. Something terrible has happened.”

“What do you think happened?”

Allura took in the scene, eyes sharp and lips thinned. “It’s difficult to say without more evidence.”

Which was a more neutral stance then Pidge initially expected. After all half the room was thinking the same thing, Zarkon. Ah, Zarkon, evil emperor to a tyrannical empire rife with human/alien rights violations. His track record made him a suitable candidate for Boogeyman of the Century and the scapegoat for any horrible thing that happened in the galaxy. To be fair he did have several thousand years of precedents to cement his reputation.

She wandered over to Hunk. “Those pockmarks remind me of the damage Sendak’s ion cannon did to Arus’ mountain range. What do you think happened?”

Hunk hummed and studied the screen again. “Climate change.”

Lance’s head whipped around, and he stared at Hunk for a moment. Then he marched over and smacked Hunk upside the head.

“Ow.”

“You’re an engineer not a mathematician, Hunk.”

“I hate to agree with Mr. Tailor, but that is an incredibly vague and nonspecific answer.”

Hunk rubbed the back of his head. “What? Maybe they got hit be a meteor. Maybe a super volcano exploded. Maybe this a natural part of Sidera’s planetary life cycle. Without more information all we have are guesses.”

“Or maybe the planet got Base Delta Zeroed,” Keith said.

For a moment Lance gaped. “Did you just make a Star Wars reference?”

“What of it?”

Mouth still hanging a flurry of emotions crossed Lance’s face. “Oh, it’s on now, Mullet.”

Oh brilliant, another unnecessary conflict.

“Actually guys, I think Coran found something.” Shoving between the two, Pidge pointed toward the main holoscreen.

“Yes! Our signal is being received,” Coran crowed.

“Excellent, Coran. Can you tell from where?”

“Hmm…Eastern hemisphere, north of the equatorial region…south of the glacial region.” A glowing green dot pulsed, and a window opened showing a sea of sand dunes motionless waves shaped by the wind. “It’s coming from the Library.”

…

After several scans the facts such as they were seemed to be:

  1. The Castle’s scans weren’t finding any active communication frequency use
  2. Nor were they picking up the concentrated biosignatures typical for settled cities or small towns
  3. Said life biosignatures the scans were picking were small to midsized but they were solitary, loosely grouped, or exhibited behavior seen in ranging packs or migrating flocks
  4. This did not match the Attaleians prior grouping or behavior patterns
  5. A communication hub in the Library was receiving the Castle’s signals
  6. Scans of the Library itself for biosignatures proved difficult since the area was heavily shielded
  7. According to visual scans of the Library’s traditional coordinates the building didn’t appear, nor did the city
  8. Given how the Library was a small city in its own right within a major port city and previously the heart of Attaleia city, its absence was concerning
  9. Something was picking up the castle’s ping’s near the library’s coordinates and registered in the Castle’s databanks with the Library’s alien IP address
  10. Radar picked up a massive underground structure beneath the Library’s historical location



A flurry of decisions unfolded. Since there didn’t seem to be anybody to contact and ask permission to land, then there was no one stopping them from parking the Castle wherever they pleased. They could send out a few drones to do some surface scans and actually look at the planet.

Hunched over in her bridge chair, Pidge stared at her puzzle. Before her the golden surface glistened with ridges, and decorative etchings were thrown in relief by the lights. In her peripherals, a giant stretch of sand, sand, and even more sand filled the screens. Pidge gave the puzzle and its outer surface half her attention. The other half shamelessly eavesdropped on new developments.

If she pressed those two points here, paused for a count of four, then rotated the middle ring twice and pressed both “poles” with a light pressure for eight ticks…

“…we could send one of the Lions out and perform a fly over.”

“I’m more interested in if anyone’s noticed our presence in system…”

Schrodinger’s aliens, Pidge mused. The Attaleian’s are both present and absent until confirmed otherwise. And then the observation itself will change the nature of the observed object.

“From the sol’s angle, we have twenty vargas of daylight. Plenty of time to scout out the area.”

Which led to a debate about which lion should go. Small and fast was preferable, but should they send a lion better suited for the terrain? Basically the benefits of greater agility and special attack versus home field advantage and a solid defense.

They sent Keith out. Apparently he knew more about navigating deserts. Between the time it took Keith to fly out and approach the Library, Pidge had unlocked three more moveable plates on her puzzle’s surface. Of course, the closer Keith got to the Library’s coordinates the less attention Pidge gave to her puzzle.

“Approaching coordinates.”

Pidge wasn’t the only one sitting on the edge of her seat. Allura was shadowing Keith’s flight path acting as support. Everyone else was suited up and staring at the main screen in the bridge watching a red streak weave through the sand dunes.

“Setting down in 5, 4, 3, 2, what the?”

The Red Lion touched down on the sand just adjacent to the edge of the underground structure. A bright light flared into being; The pillar of light pierced the sky and stretched toward the heavens. The ground rumbled and shook causing the surrounding dunes to shudder and spill.

Shiro snapped out of his shock first. “Keith, get out of there!”

Onscreen Red leaped into the air and retreated out of sight. The ground Keith landed on shimmered and rumbled as the sand shifted, moved. Almost like…

Pidge leapt to her feet. “Something’s coming out the sand.”

Keith clicked in. “It looks like a platform. The light is moving.”

The light was moving. A deep blue streak shot off in opposite directions, cornered, and shot off at right angles until a large rectangular outline framed an increasingly level area. Then in the center of the frame a blue outline of a stylized and rather feathery oval lit up.

“The symbol of Attaleia,” Allura said. “We found it.”

If she squinted, said symbol reminded Pidge of an owl. Huh.

Keith’s voice broke the spell on the bridge. ‘”Are you guys seeing this? I’m counting four more light pillars.”

Indeed four blue beacons shone out from the dunes. Well, most of them. One of the pillars farthest out flickered and went out, but the remaining three shone and faded with the blue owl.

“Uh…I’m getting a channel request,” Keith said.

Allura pulled his cockpit feed up to fill the main screen. “Answer it. It may be from the Attaleians.”

“Acknowledged.”

A tinny and obviously computer recorded message played for the bridge to hear. Like most recorded messages it sounded like the speaker paused to breathe after each inflectionless syllable.

“Welcome Paladins of Voltron to the Attaleia Library. We are honored by your visit. The library’s hours are—”

Pidge wasn’t sure if the lions were translating the speech or if the Castle was, but after a good thirty seconds of squinting at the lit rectangle in the sand and listening to the message, it hit her.

“I think we found the parking lot.”


	3. Chapter 3

 

_Day 11: Being benched sucks._

  * _Hold 9 ticks then twist clockwise 180 degrees_
  * _10 ticks = puzzle reset_



Pidge spent the next twelve hours seething with envy.

Closer scans of the parking lot showed the building remained shielded and its interior a mystery, but Keith located an armored block, the signal box, in one corner of the lot. He tripped over it and stubbed his toes. Allura and Coran learned new curses from this accomplishment, and Shiro scolded Keith over the comms.

The signal box, what sent the recorded message to the Red Lion, hugged the ground within a long slab of rock. After kicking the slab and hearing a hollow thud, Keith poked and prodded until a section slid aside, and a circular hole appeared. The hole opened over a narrow shaft that stretched down into darkness.

Down into Darkness turned out to be Library Central. There’d initially been some debate about Keith pulling back and waiting for backup, but Keith being Keith jumped down to look for himself. After the collective freak out passed he claimed it’d felt okay but empty.

In the meantime Allura started streaming feed from his helmet, and everyone got the first look inside of the Library of Attaleia for the first time in years, possibly centuries.

There wasn’t much to see. Even if the parking lot lit up like a 4th of July celebration, it looked more and more like the signal box and parking lot were running on an external power grid. The Library interior was covered in shadows and lacked convenient light switches. The system also didn’t respond to verbal prompts or keywords like: System Activate, Lights On, or Ah, my spleen!

Hands on her hips Allura took in the shadowed images lit only by the accents on Keith’s armor and the flashlight in his gauntlet. The images gave impressions of a vaulted ceiling and a wide open space.

“Depending on the security protocols, the power was probably routed to emergency reserves. We’ll need to access the main system and bring the servers online. Until then we will need to bring our own lights.” From there she briskly gave orders for an expedition.

Hunting for proper supplies, lights, portable Altean power generators, and the BLIP sensors didn’t take long. Coran pulled out a supply cache. A small drone stolen from the training deck with a BLIP sensor taped on zoomed down the shaft and started exploring. Under Coran’s direction Shiro, Hunk, and Lance loaded the supplies into a pod and flew toward the entrance.

Pidge had migrated from the edge of her chair to hovering in front of the live feed.

“I don’t get it. This is a Library. Where are the books, the shelves, the checkout desk?” She waved at the current feed. “That is an empty room.” She gave the wide, dark expanse another look. “Is it a holographic library like with our consoles? Go to an access node and look up the information you want, or a holochamber? Is everything digital?”

Allura tapped her chin and squinted at the screen. “There are rooms reserved for such uses. Do you see those dark panels on the floor? Look at the pattern. Those are the shelves. It looks like the staff had them retracted for storage.”

Those words buzzed around Pidge’s edges and slotted into place. “Retracted for storage? In the floor?”

Allura nodded. “Yes, the floor is built to connect to the lower floors, and the shelves can be lowered to a sublevel for secure storage or for cleaning. It’s especially useful for opening up floor space.”

“Let me guess. We won’t be able to raise the shelves or the console nods until the power is back.”

“It’s very likely.”

Pidge huffed and edged closer to the screen. “Visiting the Library is very boring so far.”

All those lovely daydreams of pouring through the library catalogue and downloading whatever material she could get her hands on seemed further and further away with each delay.

Two globes of light appeared onscreen and stray gleams and curls of blue light broke the darkness.

“Coran and the Paladins made it down safely.” Allura walked up beside Pidge.

Pidge sighed. The gust drained her starry eyed dreams. “I wish I could go.”

“I as well. It’s best to wait until the main levels are secured though. The Library looks well shielded and preserved, but we don’t know what is inside.”

Pidge grumbled but agreed. It wasn’t like she could do much until they restored the power or found a way to access the Library’s system.

A white smudge lingered in the far corner of the drone’s feed. It was across the room from the Paladins, but with the new light sources, it stood out amid the gloom.

Pidge jabbed a finger at the screen. “Is that a statue?”

Allura paused a moment to check the screen and then focused back on her control screens. “It looks like one of the Guardians.”

“Guardians of what? The galaxy?”

Allura laughed. “Of the Library. For the Attaleians knowledge is precious. Something to attain and protect. Learning and experience leads to wisdom, and study aides you on those paths. So several centuries ago one of rulers implemented a guard for the Library. The first guard was a living guard, and they protected the Library’s contents during a long civil war. As times grew peaceful the guard was exchanged for inorganic symbols.”

“And the swords?”

“They are mainly symbolic, for the most part ceremonial. It wasn’t the swords you had to watch. The Librarians were said to take late returns very seriously, but that usually meant they were hunted you down personally.”

The seething envy settled in shortly after. Everyone healthy was in the Library, and no matter how she goggled at the screen it wasn’t enough. Finally, the frustration of seeing but not touching goaded Pidge into retrieving her helmet and armor. The armor she tucked beside her chair. She slipped on the helmet. Joining the “Expedition” channel took seconds.

Pidge spent the next several hours arguing with Coran and Hunk about possible locations to find power inputs or access nodes. When she wasn’t badgering for attention, she oohed, awed, and babbled over a genuine outer space library, and all its wonders.

Finally a raging tension headache, Hunk’s terse replies, and Shiro’s mediating sent her offline. Grumbling Pidge tucked her helmet under her arm. She supposed endless exclamations of “Wait, what’s that?”, “Ooh, look over there,” and “Have you tried pressing it harder while turning it clockwise?” grated after the first five minutes.

Allura was too busy coordinating activities to notice Pidge leaving the bridge, or the fact that she took her armor with her.

Back in her room Pidge flopped onto her bunk. She fished out a water pouch and the last of her Advil. The painkillers removed the sharpest edge of her headache, but the uncomfortable stretched feeling, like someone was trying to pull her forehead apart, remained.

She didn’t blame the rest of her crew for getting snappy with her. Heck, she was irritated with how cranky and grumpy she was post concussion. Yes, Shiro and Coran said it was part of the side effects and would get better in time, but, stars, she was getting as bad as Lance when he picked pointless fights with Keith. She usually didn’t snap at someone unless they deserved it, and she always gave what the situation deserved. Yet she’d fought with Lance and picked a fight with Shiro, _Shiro,_ part of team Let’s Get Katie’s Family Back.

With another sigh she flopped over. Head nestled on her pillow she surveyed her domain. An army of water pouches lined the walls. At her last count she had 55 spread between three groups. A giant mass collected near the wall, and a small squad of ten lingered near her bed. She also had two extra pillows, one of them large enough for her to curl up and sleep on, and an extra soft blanket to curl up in.

The water pouches and nesting material were get well tokens. The blanket and pillows appeared in the first hazy days after her initial injury, and the water pouch army accumulated over the following week as gifts from her team. She’d quickly learned after frequent interruptions from concerned teammates that the quickest way to get rid of them was to ask for water or a snack. The concerned helicopters left her alone and felt like they’d actually helped her. By giving her water pouches of all things.

No, she couldn’t have her laptop or be told where it’d mysteriously disappeared too, but she could have all the water her heart desired.

She flipped over facing the wall. She had so much water and snacks she could practically live off them for the next three days. She didn’t have to leave her room if she didn’t mind not…showering…

Pidge sat up and really looked at her room.

She had her armor. All the water she could ever need and stashed rations and snacks, nonperishable rations. No laptop but if she snuck into Green’s hangar she still had the scanner she and Shiro used to track Green down in the first place.

Huh.

A great toothy grin stretched from ear to ear across her face.

“Well, how about that?”

…

The key to sneaking lay in underestimation. You should act how you’re expected to behave and avoid drawing attention to yourself. Strolling around the Castle with a grin as big as the Grinch’s on Christmas Eve wasn’t an option. Neither was cackling like a crazed scientist.

No, Pidge was recovering from a _mild_ traumatic brain injury. Sleepy, difficulty focusing, forgetfulness, and a general cranky mien were expected. So Pidge shuffled into the kitchen and trudged over to the counter while muffling a yawn.

“Did I miss dinner?” She stopped and blinked in only half feigned surprise. “Wow, you’re back.”

Hunk looked up mid-whisk and smiled. “Hey Pidge. No, you didn’t, and yes, we are. We got back, eh, 15 minutes ago, and man, am I hungry.”

Everyone crowded into the kitchen. Keith peered over Hunk’s shoulder at the bowl of goo. Coran, Shiro, and Allura stood in a loose triad talking. Mr. Tailor had flopped over the counter near the sink and looked miserable.

“Got an ETA on dinner, Hunk?” he whined.

Because she had to stay in character, Pidge spared Lance the briefest of annoyed scowls and recomposed her sleepy but curious expression.

“If you’re that hungry the goo nozzles still work. Just grab a bowl and go, Lance,” Hunk said. “Tonight everyone fends for themselves. Except you, Pidge. If you don’t want goo, I can whip something up for you real quick.”

Lance groaned but shuffled over to the cabinets.

“So, how was the Library?” Pidge asked. “Did you find anything?”

“Yup, Coran found a power outlet and used one of the drones to trace it back to the lobby’s emergency power supply. We have light now, and we may have found the mechanism needed to raise the shelves. Oh, and we definitely found one of the Inquiry Nodes. Lance tripped over its retracted podium.” Eyes crinkling, Hunk chuckled.

“Ugh, laugh it up.” Bowl in hand Lance poked his goo. “We found it, and Coran started poking it for server access. It’s too battered for a quick fix, but we don’t call him the Coranic for nothing.”

Hunching her shoulders Pidge peered up at Lance and Hunk. Showtime.

“I see. Well, good luck with that.”

“Good luck? What, no suggestions?”

Pidge sighed and dropped her head. “Usually sure. But landing on Sidera, finding the Library, and staring at the screen really tired me out. My focus is hit or miss lately, and I got the biggest headache after watching you guys explore for hours.”

The beauty of this performance was that it had the benefit of being true.

“I think I’m going to take Coran’s advice and rest tomorrow. Stay in my room, nap, and stay away from bright screens. Maybe work on my new puzzle. If I don’t push my recovery I’ll heal feaster. Plus, I can wait for you guys to do all the dirty work and clear the area first. For all we know there’s a balrog sleeping in a subbasement.”

Hunk chuckled and started to speak before paling and clicking his mouth shut. He laughed nervously. “You- you don’t really think—”

Lance however frowned at Pidge and gave her a critical stare. “Waiting to look at the new alien tech up close is surprisingly levelheaded and mature of you.” He leaned in sizing her up. “Who are you, and what have you done with Pidge?”

Pidge leaned in and glared at Lance through her frames. “I’m the girl recovering from a mild brain injury. Getting hit in the head with a training drone takes a toll.” She turned and gave Hunk and encouraging smile. “Alien planet, Hunk. Anything’s possible.”

Heading over to the cabinets, she grabbed a bowl and started rooting around for more rations.

The tricky part of her plan would be getting out of the Castle and into the Library without anyone noticing. Pidge could leave in Green while running the cloak. That would get her out undetected, but the cloak wouldn’t last forever, and Allura would notice when Green appeared outside. With five people in the library and the BLIP tech, they’d know when she dropped in. Then she’d get frog marched back indoors and sat on, or carted out over someone’s shoulder.

Plus, Green might not do well maneuvering around all those sand dunes. Not to mention other environmental hazards.

Tongue caught between her teeth, Pidge stared into the cabinet and chased logistical problems around her head. There was a way forward. All she had to do was find it or make one. Perhaps the main control system in the Castle could randomly reset for a brief window tomorrow morning. Nothing permanent or damaging, but a small time slice she could duck out. Maybe she could grab, ah, borrow one of those gliders Allura used to get to the Balmera’s surface? She’d still have to handle the sensors in her armor…

“Are you going to take the whole cabinet or is half the rations not enough?”

A sharp thrill of shock shot down her spine, but, thankfully, Pidge kept any flinches under control. Her voice only wavered a tiny amount.

“Keith! Ah, no. No, I’m not—“

Somehow Keith had snuck up behind her and leveled the driest look at her. So dry it fit right into the desolate badlands outside. Pidge steeled herself. Maybe stuffing rations in her pockets while lost in thought hadn’t been her best plan.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

Face calm, Pidge began emptying her pockets and placing the rations back into the cabinet. Each replaced item made her internal supply roster cry, but she continued. Her plans couldn’t afford attention. She glanced over and caught the upward hitch of an eyebrow.

“What? I eat my feelings when I’m bored.”

Keith gave her transparent dodge all the belief it was due. None. He drawled. “Uh-huh.”

Grabbing her elbow he steered her out of the kitchen and down the hall. Towards her room actually. Growling she jerked her arm out of his grip and spun to face him.

“I’m tired of people manhandling me and telling me what to do.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t be so obvious about your decision to sneak out.” At her enraged expression, he raised a hand. “The last time you stocked up on food like that was before Sendak bombed the castle on Arus. If you really want to check out the library, you’d do better in a group then alone. It’s less dangerous, and someone will have your back.”

Her irritation tapered off. Cocking her head Pidge took his words and turned them around like interesting variables that in a new program.

“Are you offering to help me?”

Keith shrugged. “If you suddenly appeared in the Library, you’d get sent back to the Castle. But. I may have overheard a few things.”

“Oh?”

“Coran found a way into Library’s computer system. He thinks he found a way to pull the Library out of preservation mode and raise the shelves. The Library is linked to different archives. Each stores their own specialized content. Four of those archives are linked to the main computer system. The fifth is offline.”

The pieces aligned quickly from there.

“They’re sending someone to check out the fifth location and get it back online,” Pidge said.

“They’re sending Hunk. He’s going to take the Yellow Lion to reach it. It’s buried under a cliff somewhere.”

“Coran and Shiro would send me back as soon as they caught me.”

“But if they aren’t actually present to send you back—”

“I have wiggle room. I’ll take it.” A large smile burst across her face, and Pidge jumped over and grabbed Keith in a hug. Head tucked against his chest, Pidge felt Keith stiffen then slowly relax. He coughed and shifted.

“Don’t mention it. You didn’t hear it from me.”

Pulling back Pidge smiled. “I heard nothing from nobody.”

“Pidge. Stay safe, ok?”

Keith made the best partner in crime.

Finishing packing didn’t take long. Heavy items went on the bottom and the lighter ones at the top. She left space to stuff any tech she picked up from Green’s hangar. Packed she slipped into her armor and counted the hours until everyone fell asleep or at least stayed in their quarters. Which would be late, but she could wait.

She knew all about waiting.


	4. Chapter 4

_Day 12_

Breakfast had to be Hunk’s favorite time of day. There was nothing quite like waking up in the morning, rubbing sleep from your eyes, and opening the fridge to a world of opportunities. Whether it was scrambled eggs, pancakes, omelets, bananas, or breakfast tacos. There were so many ways to start the day, and breakfast was the only way for Hunk.

Unfortunately, food goo, while filling and available, didn’t have the right consistency for scrambled eggs or omelets. The kitchen didn’t have bread for toast or milk or syrup. But there was a kind of grain. Grinding it would take a lot of time, too much to justify during the regular weekly defending the universe grind, so no pancakes or tacos.

The day’s bright start dimmed.

Hunk hadn’t seen hide or hair of a banana since the Garrison commissary, and the last fruit they picked up had turned every human tongue purple. Hunk got the sweats and had cold and clammy skin for the day. Lance’s freckles turned purple. Allura and Coran had loved the date-like fruit, but it’d been added to the Not Safe for Paladins list. Come to think of it Shiro had avoided the dates outright, and Pidge had taken her cue from Shiro.

Food goo it was.

Bowl in hand Hunk headed toward the bridge. He met Lance along the way.

“What’s with the long face, Hunk?”

Lance was hopping down the hall trying to pull on his left boot.

“Food goo. The kitchen’s low on edible ingredients. I could really go for bananas today. Or bacon.”

Deciding that hopping clearly wasn’t working, Lance switched to stomping.

“Yeah, I miss oranges, and I’d kill for a burger and fries. Or ice cream. Or, or pizza. Gah! Just fit you stupid shoe.”

Thinking over all the foods he missed like ice cream, roast beef, nachos, or his grandma’s sweet coconut buns, Hunk sniffed and wiped an eye. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“—cheese and crackers, boot. I swear, if you don’t—go—I’ll, I’ll. I’ll throw you at Mullet. Hah, yes! In your face space boots.”

Maybe if he broke the grain into small balls and boiled it, they’d have an edible grain, like couscous.

“Ooh, Lance, dinner idea. Food goo on top of alien couscous. On a scale of 1 to 5.”

To his credit Lance stopped mid victory boogey and thought about it. He wrinkled his nose, and anyone walking by could practically see the idea tossed from one side of his brain to the other.

“Two and a half, but the image in my head looks like Coran’s Paladin dish.”

Now that Hunk thought about it, yeah, that was a good point. Green goo on top of a small bed of rounded grain balls did look regurgitated.

“Point. I’ll work on the aesthetic appeal.”

“Awesome, now come on. We have a whole new planet to explore.”

Hunk jogged after him. “I’ve got to admit finding an alien library is sweet. I think Coran figured out how to get the shelves working. I wonder if they have engineering manuals. Or technical magazines.”

“I want to know if they have a history on spaceflight. How different planets and species got into space, and the kind of ships they built.”

“Whoa.” Hunk slowed down at a familiar dark head above red and white armor. “Hey Keith. Good morning.”

Keith nodded. “Hi.”

Hunk glanced between Lance and Keith and relaxed at the calm smile on Lance’s face. “Eat breakfast yet? Wait, wait, rate on a scale of 1 to 5. Food goo on space couscous.”

“Four.”

Lance scoffed. “Four? No way.”

Keith shrugged. “Food is food. You can’t always be picky about what you eat.”

Lance grumbled but subsided. “I guess. But I’ve had three days of food goo. I want something else.”

Hunk nodded. Variety in a menu did wonders for morale.

Lance scowled. “Yeah, actually I was looking in the cabinet for food, and our space granola bars box is almost empty. I was sure there was more yesterday at lunch.”

Keith shifted from side to side. “Weird. Maybe the mice ate them. Anyway, I just saw Allura. Coran’s in the Yellow Lion’s hangar waiting for you. You need to head down there.”

“Wait, really? What for?”

“Special mission. I need to meet up with Shiro.”

“Okay, take care,” Hunk called after him while waving. He turned and caught Lance’s face. “What? He’s our teammate. It’s polite.”

Lance sighed, and they both headed toward Yellow’s hangar.

“Wait, shouldn’t you check in with Allura? She might have a mission for you.” Hunk asked.

“I highly doubt it. I’m not that special. Besides, got to keep up with the buddy system.”

“The buddy system.”

“Yes.”

“And the fact you won’t be stuck in the same room as Keith for most the day isn’t part of this decision at all.”

“That, Hunk, is a bonus.”

Down in the hangar Coran hovered over a clipboard. Well, an Altean smart clipboard which seemed to be a cross between a holoscreen, a tablet, and an actual clipboard. Pretty cool not to mention multifunctional.

“Ah, Number Two, Number Three! How are you this fine Hump day?”

With a smile Hunk said, “Doing great Coran. Good morning to you too.”

The key to adapting to different alien cultures involved communication and the free exchange of ideas. In other circumstances it required smiling and nodding and making a note to ask later.

Behind him Hunk heard a low, “Ugh, morning people.”

Smiling and nodding sometimes included best friends.

“Keith said you had a mission for me?” he asked.

“And for me,” Lance said stepping forward and grabbing Hunk’s arm. “I’m going with Hunk.”

Coran looked between the two and nodded. “That shouldn’t be a problem. It’s always good to have someone watching your back.”

“Exactly,” Lance said. “It’s not safe to go alone.”

“Well said, Number Three. I couldn’t agree more.”

Lance shot Hunk a cheeky, pizza eating grin. Hunk took a deep breath and released it. Roomies.

“Alright. We managed to get the main library computer system open in safe mode. Its security is restricting access from most of its files, but some of the Voltron Paladin codes are granting us limited access. I will keep attempting to restore full access to the system. Meanwhile, from what information we do have, the Fifth Archive is offline. It isn’t connected to the Library’s main system currently. It doesn’t seem to be a software problem, so it’s probably a physical issue. You are to go to the Fifth Archive, gain access inside the building, restore the power, and connect it back to the main system.”

With a few quick taps a holographic 3D map of the library and five connected buildings were displayed.

“Normally, the main library allows physical access through a series of underground tunnels, but we’re currently locked out of those levels. You will need to take the Yellow Lion and fly to the Archive’s location to enter. Any questions? Great. Drop a BLIP sensor when you get there, and keep us updated on your progress. Allura will be acting as support from the Castle.

“Oh, one more thing. Since the Fifth Archive is offline you’ll need to be careful about the Security Protocols. We managed to get a temporary security pass in the main system, and once the Fifth Archive is brought online and synchronized with the main system, it will extend to you. Until you connect the Archive to the main system do not, I repeat, do not activate or trigger any security protocols. Practically speaking, that means no touching, no stealing, no breaking, do not move anything, and do not take anything off the shelves.”

“What happens if Security gets activated before then?” Lance asked.

“That depends. If the power is down, nothing. If it’s restored, then the Archive will mete out swift and sudden vengeance.”

Hunk gulped and felt his knees begin to knock together. “R-really.”

Coran twisted his moustache in thought. “Well, a lot of loud alarms will sound throughout the complex, and there’ll be a bunch of flashing lights. It might cause our security clearance to get revoked if the Archive gets into locked down.” Coran smiled and cheer reentered his voice. “Worse comes to worse you’ll get kicked out, but you are Paladins of Voltron. I’m sure you can handle it. Toodles.”

He strolled out of the hangar whistling as he went.

Lance reached over and patted Hunk on the shoulder. “I think we can cross balrogs off our be on the lookout list. C’mon.”

Somehow that didn’t make Hunk feel better.

Climbing into the cockpit helped ease the worse of his jitters. Yellow woke up with a pleased growl when Hunk input the Archive’s coordinates. He had a mental impression of Yellow circling around his mind and greeting Hunk with a warm cheek rub. Even better Yellow left behind a steady calm. Together, they could endure anything.

Once in flight Yellow’s attention turned outward. Like, ah, of course, this was his favorite place to be. Well, the Yellow Lion was the Guardian Spirit of Land. He probably felt right at home flying above the dune sea.

Hunk leaned forward and squinted. “Huh, looks like the coordinates are by that plateau over there. Only down, way down.”

Leaning over Hunk’s shoulder, Lance kept an eye on the altimeter. “Far down. The Library’s ground floor is at least three stories down from our rooftop maintenance hatch. The main entrance for the Archive is at least that far down, if not, whoa.”

Hunk agreed. Soaring over the plateau the terrain steeply dropped off. A drop off so sharp he couldn’t see the bottom.

“First we found the Sahara desert then we found the Grand Canyon in space.” Pulling back on the handles, Hunk eased off the throttle and took in the view. “There’s something about the canyon though. It’s too linear.”

“A river didn’t make this canyon,” Lance said. “Rivers bend, curve. This looks like someone took a knife, stabbed it into the rock and started cutting.”

The edge of the plateau did look like it’d been cut. The perfect angular drop reminded Hunk of a quarry. The canyon looked like someone had started, uh, carving and split into two branches. Some weathering had softened the sheer angles, but not enough.

“It’s almost like what happened in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker when the Joker unleashed a giant laser on Gotham—“

“Not helping Lance,” Hunk cut in. “Ok the coordinates are at a lower elevation but further south.” He jerked the controls and followed the holographic trail onscreen toward his target.

“Lance, you’re freaking me out. If you need to make pop culture references, fine, but you’ll leave out any references to balrogs, Jokers, death rays, whatever. If you don’t, I’m flying you back to the Castle and switching you out for Allura or, or, _Keith_.”

The warm presence hovering over his shoulder pulled back, and when Lance spoke a note of contrition rung through.

“You’re on edge. What’s up?”

Further away from the plateau the perfect angularity carved into the rock softened to a more natural, weathered stone.

“It’s this planet. I know a lot can change in ten thousand years. A lot can change in a day. And the more I see of the planet, the more deliberate all these scars seem.”

There, the cliff wall parted, and the opening was both large enough for Yellow to jump through and blended into the environment well enough to not be noticed.

“There was probably a war here. A space battle that moved on planet. Whether it was between the Siderans and the Galra, or an in system feud, or even two groups on the planet deciding to go at it, it happened. I can handle anticipating security system malfunctions. I’m trying not to think about the possibility of finding skeletons inside or preserved bodies. All the cute references aren’t helping.”

The passage ceiling lowered, and Hunk switched from flying to letting his lion run across the ground. The way was mostly clear but not free of twists, turns, and piled rock. But it looked normal like something you should see in the middle of a rocky, desert area.

“Ok, the walls are closing in. I don’t think we’ll be able to take Yellow much farther.” A readout on a side screen grabbed his attention. “It looks like there’s a road.” The path pulled up an outline of the floor. “Yeah, it’s paved. The stone tiles look a lot like the rock we saw in the plateau.” Something tightly wound within Hunk eased. “Maybe that really was a quarry back there.”

Lance hummed neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Hunk focused on stopping. Yellow crouched down and a warm breeze rushed into the cockpit. Hunk ran through his quick list. Armor on. Bayard equipped and hovering in hammer space. Coordinates downloaded into the handheld Altean tracker. Lance had the bag of tech gear with water and snacks. Which left one last stop.

“Ok, last chance to use the little boy’s room in comfort with toilet paper is now. Once we get inside unless we magically find a functioning toilet, well, it could be a while. Unless you don’t mind finding a boulder outside.”

Lance grimaced. “Pass. Lion restrooms have soap. Plus it makes my hands smell nice. I call first dibs.”

He bolted out of the cockpit and toward the, heh, rear. Hunk followed leisurely behind. He had to hand it to the Alteans. When they designed their leonine alien warships they thought of everything. Comfy seats complete with butt magnets, artificial gravity, internal life support, a store of rations and water, and a bathroom. It might be compact, but it really helped in times of need.

A shrill screech echoed down from the bathroom.

“Lance?” Hunk hustled forward.

He’d calmed down to soon. What if a scorpion had crawled in, or someone left a prank behind, or a rubber spider?

Yellow rumbled in the back of his mind, and quiet amusement radiated out. A furry head butted against his hand urging him forward.

_Go and see._

“What are you doing in there?”

Definitely Lance.

“Me? Why don’t you pay more attention to your surroundings?”

Oh no. It couldn’t be.

But it was. Lance stood outside the bathroom niche, all armor thankfully in place, and across from him Hunk saw white armor with green markings. Above the armor was fluffy light brown hair, and sharp golden-brown eyes that burned a familiar determination. No glasses though. Hunk glanced between Lance and Pidge and held back a sigh. And to think breakfast had started out with such promise.

Lance rallied shifting from shocked horror to indignation. “Uh-uh, no. You are not supposed to be here. Hunk, get back in the cockpit. We are turning this lion around right now—”

Pidge kicked him in the shins. The blow succeeded in shocking Lance. That gave her the opportunity to dart forward past Hunk and scan the archive’s coordinates from the cockpit’s screens and disappear.

Hunk’s stomach dropped with the hydraulic hum of a lowering platform, and the soft whoosh of displaced air. She hadn’t disappeared. Moving forward he peered out through the front screen, and yep, a yellow speeder with a green dot inside sped away from Yellow.

“She took my speeder!”

“Come on, she may be in the speeder, but we know where she’s going.”

Lance ran down the ramp and out into the rock way. Hunk hurried after him dimly registering Yellow sitting up and unfurling his shield. Fond amusement tickled his mind.

“We won’t keep up,” he shouted ahead. “She’s got my speeder.”

“We have jetpacks,” Lance replied.

“Oh, right.”

Using the jetpacks helped them jump over the worst of the rock piles. But the path thinned, and the sides sloped closer together until the ceiling limit forced Lance and Hunk to keep going on foot.

Rounding a bend they found the speeder parked inside a carved out hollow in the wall, and the path narrowed further. Soon they were walking on the path keeping an eye out on the rough red rock gradually embracing them.

“Tricky little Pidge,” Lance said. “She probably slipped right through.” He ducked and sidled sideways. “You ok back there, Hunk?”

“Yeah, I can fit. Wait, I think we’re getting closer. The path’s straightening out. I can actually see around the corners a little. There’s something yellow ahead.”

Lance kept moving forward, and yeah, the twists and turns were evening out. The walls rocky bulges smoothed out. Glancing up Hunk saw a thin stream of brilliant blue threading between the red stone towering overhead.

“At least the air is moving. Wait, I think I see it.” Lance shot out of the passage and out into a wide clear space and sucked in lungfuls of fresh air. “Made it Hunk. You gotta—” Lance properly took in the wide empty courtyard, and the rock wall ahead.

“Got to…see…”

He tilted his head upward, and his jaw dropped. Not another word came. His tongue wouldn’t move, and his mouth started to dry from the gaping. But he looked and kept looking even when Hunk bumped into him and fell silent as well.

One archive, found. Check.

…

Hiding in the Yellow Lion’s bathroom hadn’t been her finest plan. As far as clichéd hiding spots went, hiding in the bathroom was third on the list behind under the bed and in the closet. Yet it was the one spot that could fit both Pidge and her supplies.

She’d snuck out after lights out past the time even Shiro might wander the halls. Blanket and pillow stuffed underarm she had swung her backpack on her back and went off to visit Green.

She hadn’t stayed long. Dawdling in between her target only increased the chances of being caught, but she’d stuffed as many potentially useful tools and tech from the lab into her backpack. Still no sign of her laptop, dang it, but she’d spent a good quarter hour leaning against Green’s paw.

Green’s eyes had lit up, and a silent rumble curled around the edges of her thoughts in the space all things Voltron and Lions went. The rumble had been like a gentle hug mindful of delicate axons and synapses and repairing tissue before retreating back to _sleep_.

Convincing Yellow to let her in had been the trickiest part, but apparently, impressing how Yellow was her only hope of escaping boredom and saying pretty please worked wonders on persuading mechanical lions. Well, the Yellow Lion was caring and kind. Sheltering a young ‘cub’ probably fell in those lines.

Bunking in the bathroom and waking amid the rumble of flight and to the sound of muffled voices helped drag Pidge out of sleep and into action. She slid the door panel open a hair to keep track of any updates.

So, she’d successfully snuck out of the Castle and was en route to the archive Keith mentioned. Excellent. From the distinct lack of raised voices, she hadn’t been discovered. Yet.

She’d narrowed her way out to three options. If no one found her, she could sneak out behind Hunk and Lance and shadow them to the Archive. Or if she timed it right, she could wait for Hunk to lower the ramp and leave before they saw her. It would be tricky to time since she’d have to move down the ramp before they saw her. And if the universe hated her and she got caught, she could try for the speeder. Yellow seemed to like her, and he did work with her and Green as part of the left side of Voltron.

The universe, of course, hated her, so Lance found her crouched behind the bathroom’s sliding door and screamed bloody murder. So she took the speeder and headed to the Archive at full speed. When the path ahead grew too narrow for the speeder, she went ahead on foot keeping one eye on the map projected from her gauntlet and the other on the path ahead.

It felt good to run again. Pack on her back and helmet on her head all incoming audio muted, she ran until the path forced her to jog, and jogged until she had to walk. But she kept moving until the red target onscreen let out rapid, happy beeps, and she spied goldenrod stone peeking out between the red shelves ahead.

She rounded the last twist in the path and emerged in an empty plaza. It was flat, level, and completely empty of rock or stone, and clearly part of an ancient way stop, a place for foot and mobile traffic to gather and move. Straight across from her rose a towering stone edifice, a building face carved from stone, carved into a cliff.

(@[Mintless](http://feedthemintless.tumblr.com/post/163494368349/the-library-kya-here-come-my-piece-for-the))

She idly wondered if the Archive was part of an existing cave network that the Attaleians converted to their needs, or if the entire space had been carved out of the rock square foot by precious square foot. The entrance was impressive enough to suggest it.

Six stone columns carved from creamy yellow stone of the canyon wall held up a carved façade that split in two. The lower columned half seemed to double as the main entry point, and an outer antechamber. Beyond the columns was a sheltered space that held a cluster of steps and an ornate entryway, the main archive entrance. It was practical actually. Showy, sure and grand, but the sheltered area gave shade for the patrons coming and going.

More owl carvings adorned the exterior. Those were less minimalist and fluffier but were clearly some type of analogous space owl. It made her wonder if the Attaleians held the same reverence for owls like other cultures on Earth did.

Pidge jogged across the courtyard. The closer she got the greater a sense of awe entered. She paused and raised a hand against one of the stone columns and craned head back to properly take it all in.

She was Katie Holt, daughter of Dr. Samuel and Colleen Holt, sister to Matthew Holt, and Pidge to her friends. She was a Paladin of Voltron, Pilot of the Green Lion, Defender of the Universe, and the first woman and the youngest human to leave the solar system. She’d snuck into the Garrison under a false identity, traveled the universe to find her father and brother, survived fights with two Robeasts, and helped free the Balmera from Galra military forces. Yet standing here in the shadows of past greatness, she felt very, very small.

If this was what the outside looked like, she could barely imagine what the inside held. If they’d booby trapped the inside, she wouldn’t be happy. Behind her a muffled shout tickled her ears. Hiking her backpack up her shoulders, Pidge moved towards the door. Time to inspect the security system.

She gave Lance and Hunk, oh, two minutes for gawking before they saw her. That gave her two minutes to either get out of sight or inside. Extending her right gauntlet Pidge scanned the doorway and analyzed the results. The system was disconnected so any alarms would be off. It’d be better for the Archive if she left it structurally intact. The structure had lasted this long undisturbed, and she didn’t want to be the first compromise its integrity.

“Hey, Pidge!”

Pidge looked back at the scan with increasing urgency. She’d obviously overestimated Lance’s overzealous nature. Again. Maybe if she pried off the maintenance panel on the doorframe, she could rewire the circuits and open the door.

Summoning her bayard, Pidge traced the cut area. She would have to be quick, precise, and delicate. Like soldering practice or constructing a circuit board.

“Pidge, stop!”

Getting tackled by Lance had not been on today’s to do list. In fact Lance’s presence on her information gathering trip had not been mentioned, thanks Keith. Fortunately for all parties both present and absent, Lance had the good sense to tuck, twist, and cushion his tackle. So, on the one hand, Pidge didn’t slam into any walls or bang her head against the stone at high speeds. On the other hand she ended up clutched to Lance’s chest as he took the brunt of the fall. Lance, her current least favorite person in the Castle for 12 days straight.

She flailed pawing at the sky like a bug trapped on its back. “Lance, let go!”

He did.

Sputtering Pidge lurched forward and away. “What was that for?”

Lance picked up on how she was eyeing the door and the main courtyard and grabbed her wrist. “Don’t go anywhere. Hunk’s got Allura on line. Actually, unmute your line. She’s adding you to the team frequency.”

“Lance—”

Hunk jogged up. “I’ve got news. Allura’s got an idea on how to get inside _without_ potentially tripping any alarms now or later.”

With a pointed Pidge yanked her wrist free. Lance in turn gave her a far too serious look, like he was worried, the overprotective oaf. After a shrewd analysis that weighed the odds of getting dragged back to the Yellow Lion, Pidge unmuted her audio channels.

Allura’s voice came through clear as day.

“—scans seems to indicate solar sensors on the roof, and a good number seem to be functional. So the Archive is taking in some form of power which makes it likely the preservation protocols are also online.”

“But not security,” Hunk replied.

“I can’t confirm or deny that. The Archive is offline from the main Library system, but it appears some local internal systems may be functioning. What those systems are and to what degree they are functioning, we won’t know until you access it.”

“So how are we getting inside, and hey, Pidge, say hi.”

Pidge crossed her arms and twisted her lips. Hunk frowned at her in admonishment. Allura joined the party.

“Pidge, you’re still on restricted duty,” Allura lightly chided.

“What’s this about security?” Pidge asked. Hopefully some classic deflection would end that line of conversation. “Lance tackled me before I could start hacking the door. He’s lucky I didn’t hit my head. Again.”

That remark caused Lance to cross his arms and glare at her. A glare she was all too happy to return.

“Basically if we breathe wrong, and security’s active, the Archive will freak and lock down tighter then a clam. So, Allura’s helping us get inside,” Hunk said.

“Yeah, Pidge,” Lance cut in. “Tighter then a clam. We can’t just break in willy nilly. We need to be careful.”

“This is not the first time I’ve bypassed high security and accessed restricted areas and material. I know what I’m doing.”

“On Earth, maybe. This is a brand new alien culture.”

“Enough!” Allura’s voice clear, commanding, and absolute broke apart the argument. “This is not the time for bickering. The Castle’s environmental scanners have picked up a sudden change in the local air currents. If you three cannot work together, then I am ordering you back to the Castle immediately.”

Pidge gasped. “No.”

“Allura thinks a sandstorm might be brewing,” Hunk said. “Apparently, the air conditions started changing once we flew into the Archive’s hidden canyon, but we didn’t notice because, well, Lance and I were talking, and then we were chasing you.”

“Yes,” Allura said. “The weather conditions started changing quickly. Too quickly. I’m not sure the changes in air currents are natural for the region. You have two options. Shelter in the Archive or return to the Castle. With the way the weather is acting, and I don’t know if you will reach the Yellow Lion before the front moves in.”

Which would lead to getting sandblasted.

“So, we either shelter in the rock path or in the Archive. Great. I vote inside a marginally climate controlled area,” Lance said. He stretched his arms above his head. “Ok Beautiful, just tell us how to work around the doors, and we’ll have this place open before you can say Open Sesame.”

The extended pause over the channel was oddly gratifying.

“Yes…Hunk, please pull out the power crystal Coran packed with your supplies.”

Pidge watched closely. Allura walked Hunk through extracting a fine electronic tool kit that allowed him to remove a panel from the door frame. From there she had him isolate two different wires and what looked like a fiber optic cable. He removed a second crystal, their Security Clearance which should prove the user was a member of the Altean Royal Diplomatic Corp. Allura seemed optimistic the crystal would be recognized, and that the friendly relations between Attaleia City and Altea would be remembered. And well, after the light show over the main library and Coran’s progress accessing their systems, she might have a point.

The power crystal was spliced into a circuit with the two wires. The fiber optic cord was wrapped around the Security Credential crystal several times. Tongue poking out of his mouth, Hunk moved with steady precision and secured the last of the wires into place.

“Open…Sesame,” he muttered.

Around them the sky had grown dark, and the wind picked up. That didn’t stop the trio from hearing the _click_ from the door. A soft hum started and half the door slowly swung inward.

The three fell back into gaping and staring.

“Paladins,” Allura’s voice crackled through their helmets. “There isn’t time. You must seek shelter within.”

“Oh, right.”

Hunk checked the connections and tucked the wires and crystals back inside the doorframe then slid the panel back in place. The low howl grew behind them, and the sky blackened as they hurried inside.

“We’re in. So does the door close on its own, or do we have to pull it closed?” Hunk asked. Crackling static built over the line.

“Probably best…close..self.” The poor connection made Allura sound ragged and choppy. “Storm…last hours. While in—…lo—ok for…starmap…viewing room…shielding...s-signal.”

The door creaked. A metallic moan grate their ears, and the door swung closed on a foreboding sky, and left the three in a room lit only by the lights on their armor.


	5. Chapter 5

“Allura? Allura, come in.”

“Allura?”

“Princess?”

Static.

Frowning Pidge reached over and started rooting through the duffel Lance wore on his back. He jumped but stilled long enough for Pidge to retrieve and activate a BLIP sensor. The sensor left off a weak light and gave the first look at the room.

It looked like the inside of a giant egg. The room itself was circular with a high rounded ceiling. The walls gently curved at the floorboards and ceiling. The floor itself was made from same sandstone as the doors and canyon rock, but a new material made up the paneling on the walls and ceiling. A large circular desk sat in the middle of the room, and parallel to it on the ceiling was a dark crystal that reminded Pidge of the Balmera crystal used to power the Castle.

“Hey guys, I think we just found the front desk,” Hunk said.

Pidge hummed and looked at the holoscreen hovering above her left arm. The readouts were not encouraging.

“So, bad news. Allura mentioned shielding, yes? Now that the door closed I’m not getting any outside signals from the Castle. It might be the distance from the Castle, the haboob raging outside, or a mix of that and whatever made it impossible to look inside the Library before we cracked open a hatch on its roof. Or the Archive is within a giant Faraday cage. Whatever the cause, we’ve lost contact with the Castle.”

Lance looked up from where he’d been nosing around the front desk poking the different buttons. Hunk paused casing the room.

“The good news is the shielding isn’t blocking signals from this floor at least. The BLIP sensor gave me a map for the floor, but the images of the upper and lower floors aren’t clear. There might be more shielding within the interior walls.”

“Huh, weird. I guess their communication and computer terminals are hardwired. The shielding must be killer on the wifi, though,” Hunk said. “Maybe there are relays between the floors?”

“Or we need to open more doors,” Lance said. He used his gauntlet light as a pointer. “Hallways at 9, 12, and 3 o’clock. Creepy statues at 5 and 7.”

Abandoning her screen Pidge turned and saw two Guardian statues framing the main entrance. She prowled closer and squinted at it. It looked different up close then onscreen. They reminded her of lions, not the Voltron lions, but something in the long tapered face. The two triangular ears jutted out from its forehead rounded out the face. The face and body were bone white which fit because looking at the face reminded her of a skull, bone white with dark pits were the eyes and mouth should be.

The two stood at parade rest, feet braced shoulder width apart. Their arms held  long cudgel that stretched from midchest to the ground. Short, tunics covered their upper legs and arms and concealed their torsos.

Up close she could see the joints in the arms and legs, and the care the crafter gave for each finger segment. She noted the palm, bendable wrist, and hinged elbow.

“They’re robots,” she squealed and looked closer. She gleefully pushed closer, fingers tracing over the casing, and she pushed aside the tunic head for a better look. “They look amazing. Really lifelike. I wonder if they were modeled off the Attaleians, or…oh.”

Pushing aside the back of the robes revealed a gruesome sight. The casing along the spine had been cracked and torn. Tangled wires were pulled out of the bundles and exposed to the air. Oily dried streaks covered the back.

“They, they ripped out its spine. They pithed it!” she said and ran to the second Guardian. She closed her eyes at the second gruesome sight and turned to the front desk. “It’s too much. I can’t.”

Lance looked over with concern. “You ok, Pidge? Coran said they’re just interface nodes, mobile information desks and library card catalogues.”

Just an interface, pfft. Pidge slumped against the desk. “Don’t talk to me.”

Lance shrugged it off and continued shining his light around the room. “I could fit Blue in here, if we blasted out the wall, and she crawled in. We could probably fit Red and Green in here if they kept their heads down and didn’t need to run anywhere. Definitely smaller then the great room of the Library.”

“Oh, yeah,” Hunk said. “With the roof gone all five of the Lions could use that room as a hangar. How long do you think the sandstorm will last?”

“Hard to say.” Pidge dragged herself up on her elbows. “Sandstorms on Mars can last for a month. Who knows about here.”

Hunk sighed. “I hope Yellow’s ok.”

“Guardian Spirit of Land, this is probably a relaxing shower to him.” Deeming the button mashing as a lost cause, Lance stood up and braced his hands on his waist. “Lady and gentleman. We have successfully located the hidden archive, followed the hidden trail to the end of the hidden canyon, and gained entrance to the mystic dungeon. We need a plan before we go dungeon crawling. Alright, inventory time. What do we have?”

Hunk and Pidge looked at each other and back at Lance.

“This is Hunk’s mission. He should be in charge.”

“Uh,” Lance looked taken aback. “I’m not trying to take lead, exactly. I just think, we’re here. We’re stuck here for awhile. Might as well make the most of it. Ooh, bathrooms. If we’re going to be here awhile, then bathrooms are a must. What about food and water? Did anyone bring a ball of string? How do you feel about making this room our base?”

Lance chattered on. He barely spared a breath between questions and didn’t stop long enough for answers. Pidge used the time to look at Hunk and quirk her eyebrows up. Tapping his fist on his chin, he glanced between her and Lance then shrugged. Fisting her hands on her hips she glared. Hunk sighed and nodded.

“It is technically my mission, so my lead. First order of business. Pidge, why are you here? I mean, we know how you got here in this room, but I’m more interest in why? And how you convinced Yellow to let you in.”

“Yeah, Pidge. Why were you hiding in Yellow’s bathroom? I nearly died of shock.”

The way Pidge saw it she could react in three different ways. Bolt and utilize the map of the Archive for a prolonged game of keep away, stay but not say anything, or stay and give as little information as possible until she deigned otherwise. Option three sounded nice.

“I was bored.” She paused and reconsidered. “And said pretty please.”

“What?”

“With a cherry on top.”

“Wait, wait. You were so bored that you decided to sneak out of the Castle, stowaway on Yellow, all to get inside one of the mysterious and creepy abandoned Library potentially ruled by Lilliputians on the off chance no one caught you. _While_ you’re medically banned from physical exertion, Voltron, training, and you know, any physical activity that could strain you?”

Lance sounded far too shocked. It’s like he didn’t know her at all.

“Yes.”

“Wait,” Hunk said. “Lilliputians? Why are we bringing up Lilliputians?”

“Who else kept this place together for so long? Magic space fairies? No. Little space men, maybe.”

“But that’s like saying the little green men or brownies are keeping the place clean. Sure we’ve seen furry, purple thundercats and space elves, but I’m going to need more evidence before we go Gulliver’s Travels on this. For all we know there’s a really tenacious maintenance robot keeping the pace together. Like Wall-E.”

Pidge watched the conversation sharply veer from her truant ways to eventually Duck Dodgers. Sometimes she thought she got people. Maybe she wasn’t fluent and half the interference came from raging teenage hormones and her developing brain, but she’d gotten teenage guys enough to pass as one. A shrimpy, nerd perhaps but that still counted. Then the conversation veered off to Duck Dodgers of all places, and she lost her signal.

On the other hand, they’d effectively distracted themselves from scolding her. And they’d left the conversation open to new challengers.

Well, if you wanted to get something done, you had to do it yourself. She channeled Shiro.

“If this Archive is like any library back home, then the bathrooms will be off in a side hall away from the shelves. They wouldn’t want any plumbing accidents near their collections,” she said. “Lance, explore the side halls for bathrooms and maintenance or electrical rooms. Hunk, you and I are staying here. I’m going to see if I can get any of the access nodes on the desk functional, and you can take inventory on our gear and food supplies. Lance, don’t wander off. We should check-in every 15 minutes, and meet back here in half an hour.”

Surprisingly, they went. Sure Lance had given Hunk a significant look and made a weird hand motion gesturing between his eyes and back to Pidge, but thank all the stars he left. Hunk slid down the cabinets and pulled the packs toward him. He was careful not to disturb Pidge’s packing, and slowly created piles for food, water, and their tools.

Pidge worked on wrestling with the cabinet doors under the desk. Some of the panels appeared seamless, and were probably automated to respond to pressure stimuli to open, which mean they were locked up tight now that the power was out. It almost made Pidge wish she’d brought a generator with her or could channel her inner quintessence in useful ways like Allura. No luck. She was just a girl with a bayard, and no way to look inside the cabinets to see if she was cutting anything important.

She paused and dug through her backpack. She’d shoved in the Altean toolkit she’d used to modify Rover. It had a laser cutter, like a laser scalpel almost. It should be strong enough to let her cut through the one cabinet door that didn’t melt into the surrounding panels and had an actual lock.

“Whoa, slow down.” Hunk wedged a ration bar between Pidge’s scalpel and the cabinet. “Coran warned us about breaking things. Said it would cause problems.”

Pidge tilted her head over until she met Hunk’s eyes. Her reply was calm and the most good natured she’d managed when talking to the others in the past 12 days. Well, it was Hunk. He ranked up there with Shiro and the mice.

“What did he say exactly?”

“To not trigger any security protocols before we could reconnect the archive to the main system. So, no touching, no stealing, no breaking, and don’t move anything.”

She graced him with a pair of lifted eyebrows. “Technically, I’m cutting.”

“Pretty sure that counts as breaking.” But he let her nudge away the ration bar and slice the lock in two.

“No breaking won’t get us far, Hunk. What if the problem is a hardware issue or a mechanical breakdown? We might need to scavenge parts to fix things.”

“Yeah, I thought of that too.”

“And?” she pulled open the cabinet door and cautiously looked around.

A sigh. “I don’t want to start breaking things unless we have too.”

Fair enough. Pidge refocused on her search beneath the desk. More of those fiber optic like cables were bundled in the back, and the bundles disappeared into a socket in the bottom of the cabinet. Small bins of….stuff, maybe alien office supplies were scattered around. The round stretchy things looked like rubber bands, and a stack of clear glass slabs with dark borders nestled in a far corner.

Once Hunk finished counting rations, he packed them up and joined Pidge’s rummaging session with a calm, “Please pass the laser cutter.”

A steady conversation started. They compared notes, observations, and generally agreed that all the wiring looked okay so far. Until they had an active power source and a way to measure the current passing through the cables, they couldn’t go further. This conclusion included Hunk’s observations of Coran’s work accessing the Library’s node.

Pidge filched a water pouch and rested her eyes enjoying the cool, musty air and the dark. There was something refreshing about the Archive. Sure she could have stayed at the Castle to rest, but it was much nicer here even with unexpected company.

“So, you’ve been mad at Lance lately.”

Maybe if she kept her eyes closed and didn’t move, Hunk would think she’d fallen asleep, and leave her alone.

“I mean, you’ve been grumpy, and ready to pick fights over, well, anything, but you seem especially mad at Lance.”

Calm, even breaths. In seven, out eleven. In seven, out eleven.

“Want to talk about it?”

So much for that.

“What’s there to talk about? He was an idiot and gave me a concussion.”

“On accident.”

“On acci- it doesn’t matter whether or not it was an accident. It happened. I’ve been alternately bored out of my mind or miserable and plagued with headaches.”

She dropped her water pouch and focused on the underlying tension that had simmered within her for the past twelve days.

“I could be doing so many things right now. I could be going through Sendak’s memories for intel or streamlining my Galra software interface or decoding my collected Galra data for anything that might point towards my family. But I can’t!

“These stupid headaches pop up at the worst times. I get tired really easily and fall asleep anywhere for no reason. My concentration and focus is quiznacked. I get mad at the smallest thing, and I find myself crying for no reason or mentally lost because I’ve forgotten what I was trying to get done. Like, this is the second time we’ve had this conversation, I guess. And none of this had to happen if he had could see beyond his nose.”

She huffed and crossed her arms. Hunk had leaned backwards as if pushed back by the force of her ire. He swallowed and leaned forward.

“I’m sorry. That sucks.”

“It does.” She took a swig of water and swallowed two painkillers. Maybe it’d take the edge off the newly budding tension headache. Or she could focus on stuff that didn’t make her mad or want to grab Lance’s bayard and start taking potshots.

“He’s trying to make up for it and help.”

“He’s annoying me and helping my headaches grow. I know he’s your friend, Hunk, and we’ll all part of team Voltron, but if Lance is really sorry for the concussion, and the resulting crew wide hovering, then he can tell me himself.”

Hunk hesitated, biting his lip.

She rolled her eyes. “What?”

“I think he did? Back when he went to sit with you, and I went to get Coran. He was saying a lot of things trying to keep your attention—you were really dazed—but I’m pretty sure an apology was one of them.”

Hmm. How to put this. Ah.

“No. Don’t remember it. Didn’t happen.”

Hunk sighed but nodded. “Fair enough.” He looked down at the handheld scanner and frowned. “I think it’s been fifteen minutes. Lance should have checked in by now.”

“Maybe he found the bathroom and got distracted swooning over his reflection in the mirror,” Pidge muttered and pulled up the BLIP’s map of the current floor. A blue V hovered at the far end of the right hallway off the main entrance.

Hunk reached over and pushed her arm down.

“No,” he said, and a thundercloud hovered over his forehead. “You’re mad at Lance. Fine. You two have to work that out for yourselves. Right now we have a mission and are stuck together for however long that sandstorm lasts.”

“He shouldn’t even be here. It’s your mission.”

“Neither should you. And it is my mission. Which means we are going to be civil and focus on the mission. No sniping, no name calling, and drop the attitude. General grumpiness is fine but lay off Lance. If we’re going to be stuck together, then we need to be able to work together.  So no fighting.”

“What, if I can’t say something nice I shouldn’t say it at all?”

“Exactly.”

“You sound like Shiro,” she grumbled.

Hunk leaned back but kept the stern face. “My mission, my rules. Fight with Lance on the Castle not in the field. Ok?”

Pidge leaned back and considered. She did need something to focus on, and she hated feeling angry all the time.

“Keep him from smothering me, and we have a deal.”

She held out her hand. Beaming, Hunk reached forward and shook.

“Agreed. Alright, let’s contact Lance.”

Pidge let Hunk reach out for the check-in. Saying she didn’t remember an apology wasn’t entirely true. The events of the incident in the training room were fuzzy and disjointed enough for her to question how it happened, but what she thought she remembered didn’t include an apology.

…

 “Pidge, look out!”

A white blur smacked her right temple. She flailed, and her grip slipped activating the grapple’s release. The line reeled in, jerking her forward, and into the air. Then her bayard jumped out of her hand and zipped off to the other end of the training deck. She tumbled off the platform head over heels.

Smack.

_…ow…_

This was not part of the plan.

“Training Simulation Deactivated.”

The floor shook, and high pitched jabbering and shrieking that kind of sounded like her name filled the air. Maybe. The green lions’ chasing stars, and binary around her head had priority over monkey chatter.

_…ugh._

Two slightly blurry faces chased away her lions. Maybe she should say something, like _what happened_ or _I’m okay._ Yeah, that was a good winner. On three sit up and say _I’m okay._ One, two, three.

Pidge lurched upwards, or tried to at least.

“Ugh.”

Objective failed. Try option two?”

“Whoa, Pidge, wow, take it easy. Don’t move.”

Ah Hunk. Must have come down from the control room at some point. He sounded anxious but otherwise calm.

Three fingers were shoved above her eyes.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

Ugh, Lance.

A large palm braced under her shoulder.

“Your pupils look ok. How do you feel? Does anything hurt?”

Ah, Hunk.

Three fingers waggled under her nose.

“What year is it? Do you know who you are? What’s your name?”

Ugh, _Lance_.

Beyond the wiggling fingers and the warmth cupping her shoulders, Pidge spotted a blur of green across the room lodged firmly up the wall. Ten feet above the highest ledge.

_I can’t reach that._

Underneath the ache and, her newly forming bruises, and general dizziness, two flies whined in her ear.

“We should call Coran or Shiro. Maybe Altean medics have hover stretchers? They have hover trays.”

“Fine, do it. I’ll sit with her.”

Ugh, why couldn’t Lance shut up? If his voice got any higher her brain would start bleeding out of her skull. Things already felt a bit mushy. Like the food goo they had at breakfast.

“Pidge, c’mon. How many fingers?”

No, food goo was wobbly, like jello, not mushy.

“Pidge,” poke, poke. “C’mon. If you don’t respond I’ll just keep asking. How many?”  
For a moment Pidge focused on the floating phalanges, and her eyes crossed. A lightning bolt of pain struck her brain. She yelped and lurched upward.

Got to get up. Walk it off. Get her bayard and the token before the platform crumbled.

Lance jerked back barely muffing a yelp of his own and caught Pidge at the shoulders.

“Wow, no, you shouldn’t move until we’ve checked your spine’s ok.”

“My bayard.”

So far. So beautiful. So green. So high.

Lance blinked and the hands clutching her shoulders tightened. “Your bayard,” he said and twisted around. “Huh, it’s really high up. Stuck, I guess.”

Yeah, she already knew that.

“It shouldn’t be hard to get down,” he glanced over at her, and his eyes widened. He stuttered. “I mean-I wonder how we’re going to get it down? It’s really high up there. Maybe Hunk could… No, no not tall enough. We could stack, no. He could jump for it! And miss. And fall and we’d have two paladins down instead of one.”

Somewhere in the middle of the babble stream, Lance inched her over to a block construct and propped her against it. Pidge blinked at him then looked back at her bayard. Maybe it’d deactivate on its own and vanish back into hammer space? No bayards left behind after all.

Lance continued on.

“I could climb up on top of Hunk’s shoulders and grab it. I mean the two of us stacked on top have to be at least eleven feet if not twelve. We are tall, manly specimens after all. I could grab it, and Hunk would lose his balance, and then we’d both fall…darn. I could _shoot_ it down!”

They could fly up there with their jetpacks and get it down.

Ignoring the swimming tilt roiling through her head, Pidge turned her chin a few degrees and glared at Lance. His throat worked bobbing up and down.

“Or, not. That would be a bad idea. Kind of like juggling a combat drone like it’s a soccer ball and practicing my killer goal kick on it too was a…bad…idea. Ugh, Pidge?”

She lurched forward. “You what?”

Lance jerked back, face sheepish and hands raised placatingly. “I may have been reliving my futbol glory days and showed Hunk my game stealing kick.”

“You, You’re why! Why…ooh.”

She sunk back against the block. The general ache throbbed through her head. Lance drifted into view with his face drawn.

“Yeah, I’m sorry.” A benefit to the low volume and careful hair swipes—was he checking her pupils again?—was that the pounding drumbeat didn’t change. “I should have been…more alert to my surroundings.”

He was quiet for a blessed moment and stopped messing with her bangs. Definite improvement. Four out of five stars in not sucky care giving. But like the rest of her day, the blessed quiet didn’t last. Lance glanced over his shoulder towards her bayard.

“Eh, if worse comes to worst we’ll let Keith get it down.”

“I’m getting it down.”

Lance snorted. “You can’t move without a dizzy spell, Pidge. We’ll get your bayard down. Besides, can you imagine? You’re so dizzy that you’d pitch over at the first block. Plus it’s on the other side of the room. You’d need mad skills or a jetpack to jump across some of those gaps. And even if you managed to get to the tallest block on the highest stack right underneath—”

She could program an Altean gladiator drone to fetch it. Or ask Shiro. Shiro would help her.

“—short arms waving, no, flailing helplessly to do anything,” Lance, flailing arms included, added a nasal tone to his voice. “Oh no, I’m Pidge. I’m too small. My puny arms are too short. I can’t reach, and my head hurts.”

Short. _Short?_

“I am not!” Pidge lurched forward again and smacked into Lance. Good, it gave her a better grip on his jacket. She clenched his sleeves. “Take it back!”

“But you are short,” Lance said. “And your arms wouldn’t reach.”

Pidge snarled, and the room swam. “Don’t call me short, Shorty.”

Lance stared at her for a moment, then detangled her hands from his jacket and propped her against the training block again.

“Fine, short stack.”

“Short stack?!”

“Or would you prefer half-pint?”

“H-half,” she spluttered. “Half-pint?”

“Ooh, munchkin, how about that one?”

There are many things Pidge can take. But headache raging, and head buzzing like a hive of angry bees, today she realized was not the day to ignore Lance out. Normally, she’d let the name-calling go.

Not today.

Katie Holt had her pride and her honor to defend.

Reaching forward Pidge grabbed Lance’s jacket lapels and yanked.

“Listen, you,” she hissed. “I don’t care how tall you or your arms are. I’ll outrun, outscore, and outdo you in any challenge. Best two out of three. We’ll see who the real half-pint with puny arms is then.”

The world might be swimming but all that mattered to Pidge was the wide-eyed look of pure terror lurking just in front of her nose. Blue eyes blinked.

“Hunk? Her brains are scrambled.”

Pidge jerked him closer, nose to nose. “What, are you _scared_ Lance? Afraid you’ll lose?”

“What—no. Hunk!”

“I think you are. I think you’re scared to lose to a pipsqueak.”

“You are really out of it,” Lance said. His eyes flicked between Pidge’s and some spot near the door.

A faint, “Don’t worry, Coran’s bringing a stretcher,” drifted from the hall.

Actually, everything was starting to sound a bit far away, like a weak radio signal cut through with interference. The swell of rage Pidge rode ebbed and dropped away. She slumped forward forehead bumping against Lance’s jaw. Two warm hands grabbed her shoulders. Soon her forehead rested against a rather boney shoulder.

More large thumps shook the room, and time grayed out for a bit.

The next clear sight Pidge saw was of a cotton puff. The white floof swayed above, way above her and the ceiling. It was attached to a tall, dark blur. More importantly a vaguely yellow and a brown blob walked beside her.

…

Huh, maybe he had apologized. She mulled that over. Nope, still didn’t count. She could have hallucinated the apology, or the entire encounter.

The helmet audio line crackled and an obnoxiously cheerful voice filled the line.

“Mission control? Houston, come in.”

Pidge let Hunk respond.

“Lance! Is there a problem?”

“Not at all. Mission Control this is Lance McClain, Paladin of Voltron, Space Ranger, Universe Protection Unit, Checking in.”

Pidge mouthed ‘Space Ranger’ at Hunk who shrugged. Through his visor his forehead puckered in thought as if chasing down a familiar puzzle. Lance breezily continued on.

“Blue Paladin Mission Log – Star Date 4072: our ship, the Yellow Lion, was grounded on route to the Attaleian 5th Archive. The landing shook loose a gremlin stowaway who we pursued inside the Archive. I scouted the right and left wings off the main entrance halls in pursuit of bathrooms, maintenance, and other useful locations.”

“Why is this familiar?” Pidge whispered.

Hunk brightened and slumped smacking his helmet. “He’s making a reference. Lance, why?”

“Ah-ah, this reference is rated E for everyone, or well, G for general audiences. I’m on a roll. Brace yourself, and wait for it.”

Something clicked on Lance’s end of the line, but a great big nothing happened on their end.

“Nothing here,” Pidge said. “What are you doing?” A gusty sigh and grunt followed. “Just, wait for, oh cool.”

Overhead a soft green glow built and a low metallic rumble filled the air. Strips of light blazed bright on the floor outline the halls and overhead the great crystal glowed a deep green. On the far wall at 12 o’clock a metal panel lifted.

“Lance, what did you do?”

A giddy laugh followed. “I found the fuse box, or I think I did. You weren’t the only person paying attention to Coran yesterday.”

“I can see that,” Hunk replied. “Some of the lights came on, and a wall section moved. We have windows now and a door into the main archive room. I can see bookshelves! Huh, there’s some sort of blue shield in front of the books.”

“I’m heading back your way. Let’s see. Oh.” Lance resumed referencing, not that Pidge could place it, yet. “I’ve crash landed on a strange planet. The impact must have waked me from cryosleep. The terrain seems a bit unstable. No readout if the air is breathable, and there seems to be no sign of intelligent life any—holy quiznack!”

“Lance?” Pidge and Hunk jumped to their feet.

A loud burst of laughter, the gut bursting, belly clutching kind, followed.

“I’m sorry. It’s just. This is the ugliest,” a loud snort filled the line. “You’ve gotta see. I’ll bring it with me. Oh man.”

A few minutes later Lance appeared with the planet’s ugliest Ferby. It was clearly a Ferby. Squat body with the head fused to the torso and no neck to speak of. Two large ears jutted out the sides, and the eyes and beak clustered together in a tight triangle. Its beady eyes stared sightlessly out at its surroundings, and its beak gaped open. The only deviation from the Ferby norm was its powerless state, thank God. Instead of a fake fur coat, it was covered in a snowy down. White feathers with a gold sheen covered its body, and a golden tassel on top of its head. Two wings were tucked tightly against its sides.

Lance proudly brandished his find and greedily drank in their reactions. Hunk seemed intrigued and hovered just out of reach. Pidge was horrified. Flashes of the misty memories of toddlerhood flashed behind her eyes.

One day Matt came back from a garage sale with a new toy, Ferman the Ferby. The dead eyes bored into your soul, and the way it talked and moved in the corner of your eye when it shouldn’t. Even in the middle of the night tucked away in the toy bin.

She still had nightmares about Ferman. So when Lance came back and spun a tale of the weirdest thing he’d found hidden on a shelf by the fuse box, well, she responded in the most logical manner possible.

Lance, holding out the abomination: “Isn’t it awesome?”

Pidge: “Get that thing away from me.”

Hunk gave her a disappointed look. Oh, right, don’t be a jerk to Lance. But this wasn’t about _Lance_ for once.

“If you can’t see how creepy that thing is, that’s your problem.”

Lance had the temerity to laugh, laugh, at her.

“But don’t you see what this means? Ferby’s are alien imports. Sent to observe and catalogue the human race for their evil overlords.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Even worse, they targeted the youngest and most vulnerable of our species, the children.”

“And who are these evil overlords?” she asked.

Lance shrugged. “The great ambiguous They. You know, _they_ say that the summer will be especially dry this year.”

Hunk picked up the feather ball and turned it around in his hands. He moved the ears, slowly spread the wings, and open and shut the mouth. He nodded.

“We’re keeping it.”

“What?”

“Sweet, thanks Hunk.”

“I want to take it apart. See how it works. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it in my duffel when I’m not working on it. Besides, I’ve always wanted to take one of these apart. They used to give me the creeps as a kid.”

“Hah, see, _They_ strikes again.”

Hunk read unhappy Pidge very well. He tucked the bird away and reassured Pidge.

“Don’t worry. If it gets too creepy, we can take potshots with our bayards. Or you can taser it to smoking ruin. We might even find a way to blow it up.”

Maybe she could rig a pod to shoot it into the sun. But that would mean taking it onboard the Castle and wasting resources. Hmm, they could drop it off a cliff before leaving.

“Fine, but if it starts talking, it’s dead.”

“Fair enough.”

Lance preened over finding not only a way to restore emergency power to their floor, but also finding the bathrooms. Or at least what he hoped were the bathrooms. There wasn’t any running water yet, but turning the power back on had to help.

Hunk took over the resource meeting next. Thanks to Pidge’s preparations they had two days worth of food and water before they’d have to cut back to half rations. Half rations would last them another two days if they conserved their energy, and the storm hadn’t let up. Fortunately, due to her packrat ways, again Hunk’s words, they had five days worth of water for all three of them, and more if they could get the water running. Lance and Hunk both seemed shocked at how much water she’d gathered. Her trite, you gave it to me, didn’t seem to mollify them.

“If worse comes to worse maybe I can get Yellow to come fetch us. They’re more supplies onboard.”

Which led to how did Pidge and Shiro manage to summon their lions to shield them from the first robeast’s landing on Arus. Pidge could only shrug.

She hadn’t called Green or consciously used the bond. She’d just been there when Pidge needed her.

“Maybe you could think really hard. Connect to the mystic energy that helped Keith find Blue,” Lance offered. Not the most definitive of plans, but enough for the time being. The conversation shifted to what to do now that they’d found a way into the Archive. Given the nature of their supplies it made sense to explore and run around before they had to start half rations.

They were stuck here until the sandstorm let up. Might as well use the time to hunt down that star map Allura mentioned and other valuable goodies. Even Pidge was going. Lance had started making noise about Pidge staying behind at the front desk and holding down the fort, yada yada. But even with the power restored she couldn’t use the desk’s control panel to access the library systems. They weren’t responding. It made sense for her to look for another access node to work with, and they were in a library archive. If the tech held to standard, then there would be a terminal or ten tucked away somewhere for her to pillage.

She was not going to let those two keep her from exploring her first alien library. So after establishing base camp and pausing for a bit to eat, they tucked away their helmets, and finally, finally took a step into the unknown.

Into the archive.


	6. Chapter 6

 

“You know at some point I thought I’d stop staring in awe at everything new,” Hunk said. “I thought I’d run out things to be surprised by. I mean after giant robot cats with their powers combined form Captain Voltron, or the Castle, or those weird robot beasts that keep popping up and attacking us. But nope, I’m still shocked.”

Lance and Pidge didn’t reply. Their jaws were busy hitting the floor.

The Archive was huge, and Pidge was in love. Perked up with water and snacks and armed with personal copies of the BLIP map downloaded to their armor, she, Hunk, and Lance had walked through the newly opened doorway and walked straight into heaven. The door led to a wide path dotted with desks and or access nodes. There were three upper stories connected to the main floor by spiraling side stairwells. But the real jaw droppers were the row upon row of book shelves.

The path acted as a midpoint that carved the room in half and acted as a central walkway. Row upon for of shelves flanked them. Up over their heads she could see balcony walkways and a second floor with more shelves and a third and a fourth. It didn’t matter if she looked left, right, or straight ahead. All she saw were shelves, and on the shelves were books. At least they looked like books if the spines glowed a deep blue and twinkled like stars behind the force fields cutting the shelves off from the outside.

Hunk cleared his throat. “I guess those are part of the preservation protocols Allura mentioned.”

Lance nodded drinking in the depth of the room. “Uh-huh.”

Pidge wondered if her friends could see the entire Milky Way twinkling in her eyes. “It’s beautiful.” Her eyes traced the arched ceiling far above. “If I didn’t have to eat, sleep, or shower, I’d lock myself in here for a week.”

“Showering’s important gremlin,” Lance said. But he nodded in agreement, so she only elbowed him in the ribs.

“We’re going to need a bigger map.”

“Uh-huh.”

Picture a library. Make it the size of a football field or a cathedral and pack that place in with shelves. The shelves stretch toward the ceiling, frame doorways, and connecting walkways and doors. The shelves stretch farther than your eye can see. You walk forward to see what’s ahead. You walk and walk, and after ten minutes of walking you still can’t see the end. The shelves stretch up to the first floor’s ceiling and continue on and on with only breaks for walkways and paths. The shelves seem to overtake the furniture, peeking out between staircases and marching on above doorways.

Each shelf was marked with alien glyphs. It was too interesting to ignore. Pidge trotted over and admired the curling detail marking the shelves.

“Maybe it’s part of the cataloging system, or an alien version of the Dewey Decimal System.”

She traced the glyph with her fingertip. The symbol shone and slowly shifted from a curled spiral to a double. Down the hall the alien glyphs of every shape imaginable shone and shifted in a passing wave starting by Pidge and rippling outward through the stacks.

“Ok, did anyone else see the alien alphabet switch to English, or am I seeing things?” Pidge asked.

“No, no I see it too,” Hunk reassured her.

Lance fired up his jetpack and touched down on the second floor.

“It’s still gibberish up here,” he called down. “No, wait. That’s so awesome. I touched it, and it just changed. Hey, did you get that warm poke in your head too?”

It was difficult to say. Pidge’s head had cycled through fatigue to headaches to grasping at straws for days. It was normal to feel mentally fuzzy, then like she’d been shot out of a cannon, and thrust onto a roller coaster. The current wobbly feeling reminded her of what a fish felt when someone started tapping on the aquarium glass.

“Maybe?” She looked over at Hunk. “If you check the third floor we can add another data point to test our hypothesis.”

He thought it over. “Sure. Hey Lance, switch.”

“Sure.”

Pidge muted her line. “Don’t leave me alone with him,” she hissed.

Hunk responded with melt in your mouth innocence. “Don’t know what you mean. Besides, got to keep up with the buddy system.”

“ _Traitor._ ”

But Hunk had rocketed off, passing Lance, and headed towards the second floor’s banister. Lance touched down light as a feather.

“Slightly psychic bookshelves. Very user friendly. Cool huh?”

Pidge squinted at Lance from the corner of her eye. He seemed genuine enough. Ok, she could be mature and professional.

“It doesn’t bother you that it went into our heads to translate?”

“Should it?”

“Yes. I don’t think the letters actually changed, only our perception of them.”

“In English?”

“This is a library. At one point it was open for everyone to visit from all over the galaxy. What if there were ten different people here from ten different planets with ten different languages and writing systems? It doesn’t make sense for the display to change to whoever’s looking at it. It’d be inefficient with a crowd. I think the Archive’s doing what the Castle does when it translates Altean and English so we can understand Allura and Coran.”

They shared an uneasy look.

“I can’t read Altean at the Castle. Neither can Hunk. It’s led to some interesting meal prep,” Lance said. “And sometimes Coran says some pretty weird things that make absolutely no sense. I can read this.”

Pidge shrugged. “The Castle is an Altean ship. It makes sense it’s interface is set for an Altean crew. That could just mean the Archive’s translation system is more sophisticated.”

“Or, there could be a backup system, where the labels physically change based on who’s reading them if there are small numbers of people,” Lance offered. “Or, it’s sending signals to our helmets which translate it for us. Like those phone apps that read signs in foreign languages and translates them. Besides, if it was peeking in our head holes and user friendly, it’d show us where the best computer to access the main system.”

The two watched their surroundings closely. Pidge looked for a welcome to the Castle of Lions Part 2 effect. Lights winking on at regular intervals creating a lit path towards the mystic admin computer terminal. Lance had his eyes peeled on the floor like it’d light up and provide the path forward.

Hunk’s call from the third floor jarred them both.

“No luck up here, just more alien squiggles.”

“So much for that hypothesis,” Pidge said.

Lance continued staring at the stacks. He snapped his fingers and jogged down the center path toward a familiar bone white figure.

“Let’s ask the interactive interface. Hello Mr. Guardian. Where’s the closest librarian office?”

Hunk balanced on the second floor railing and floated down. “Lance, what are you doing?”

“Coran said these things were like information desks, yeah? Maybe they can help us look up references.” He turned back to the Guardian. “Hello?”

He waved a hand in front of its eyes and at the lack of response knocked on its forehead.

“I guess they aren’t part of the essential systems that get fed emergency power,” Hunk offered.

Pidge shook her head. “Don’t ask me. I didn’t hear that conversation. All Allura said was that they were symbolic guardians over wisdom and knowledge.”

Or something like that. Pidge pushed the thought around. Maybe there was something else. But she had more important things to focus on. Like finding a functional computer.

“Ok, if we’re going to get this place connected to the greater network, we need a functioning computer or access node. None of the units I’ve passed have booted up much less lit up. One of our priorities should be looking for a functioning terminal.” She looked over at Hunk, gauging his mood. “This place is huge. We’d cover more ground if we split up.”

“No.”

Sometimes she hated that Hunk and Lance were such close friends. When they read each other’s mind and moved in sync things got eerie.

“Buddy system,” Lance said.

“There are three of us.”

Hunk walked forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. “So you’ll come with me, or I’ll go with you. Lance can scout out the right half of the floor. We’ll take the left half, and once we’ve cleared this floor and the side halls, then we’ll move onto the second floor.” He frowned at her pout. “This way if you need a break, you have the option of a piggyback ride.”

Now there was an idea. She had liked being tall, and the ceilings were high enough to allow it.

Perhaps her thoughts played across her face because Lance leaned in. “It’s either him or me. You’re still benched. No way are we letting you out of sight.”

Well, that decided it.

“Hunk, you’re with me.”

Lance nodded like that was what he’d expected. Oddly enough he seemed relieved. Pidge kept him in the corner of her eye. The feeling didn’t change even when they broke off sections of the map to explore, set up a comm channel, and decided to mark promising areas on the map. They prioritized finding computer labs, offices, research labs, or even another fuse box.

Why would Lance be grateful he didn’t have to babysit her for hours? Probably because she’d bit his head off. Not that that had swayed him before.

…

Working off the theory that any break in the shelves would lead to a reading area and thus a prospective site for computer lookup terminals, Pidge and Hunk hunted down study areas. They stalked the main walkway, and carefully marked computer access points, panels, and clusters. They crossed Lance’s path in a large circular area filled with podiums and chairs and tables, clearly meant to be a communal study area. A space you could spread out notes and dig into references.

Lots of shelves, yes. Computer terminals or access nodes found, yes. Did any of the access nodes power up/were powered on/respond to button smashing, no. Not at all. Were all the shelves they’d seen accessible due to blue force field skimming just over the shelf space, yes.

The group curled around Pidge’s hovering map and added notes to flagged sites of interest.

Hunk, bless him, came up with an idea while Lance and Pidge fought over text font, space Comic Sans versus utilitarian Arial.

“Have we tried turning it off then turning it back on?” he asked.

Lance paused midpoint. “Why are we resetting the systems?”

Pidge caught on faster. “Manually reset the system to see if it’ll work. But the problem seems to be the librarians didn’t hook up the control panels to the emergency power.”

“Or we haven’t reset the right circuit.” Hunk offered. “Lance, to the fuse box. We’ll wait here and tell you if it works.”

…

“Ok, what about when I flip this switch?”

The lettering on the nearest row of shelves froze and faded away.

“You killed our shelf labels. Next.”

“Ok, what about now?”

The overhead lights on the left half of the floor winked out.

“Nope, that killed the lights on half the first floor.”

“What about when I press button number five?”

The study area and the right half of the Archive plunged into darkness. The only visible light came from the blue paneling hovering over the shelves and the blue highlights on Hunk and Pidge’s armor.

Pidge tapped on the closet control node and shook her head.

Hunk sighed then turned on his helmet lights.

“Now all of the first floor is dark.”

…

Lights shining merrily and all restored back to its previous state, more or less, the three crowded around the map.

Hunk fiddled with the ends of his headband.  “The public accessible computers were clearly not a priority. So we have to either find the fuse box that allows us to restore power to them, or we find a terminal that would be prioritized.

 “That might be located off site or on a lower floor. I’d rather focus on finding an active terminal then hunting for controls that might restore power to nonessential systems,” Pidge said.

“Well, I for one walked all over the outer hallways flanking the stacks. All the rooms were locked. No lights were on, and I started getting flashbacks of the Castle trying to kill me.” Lance folded his arms across his chest. “I also didn’t find any elevators, stairs, or zip lines. If there is a basement I haven’t found it yet.”

Pidge pulled out her bayard. The blade flared to life in a sharp green tang. “We could cut our way in. Or check for air vents.”

“Pretty sure that falls under the breaking and entering clause,” Hunk offered. “And vent crawling is strictly reserved for Die Hard hostage situations or pranking Keith. Whichever comes first.”

His stomach gurgled, and he hunched over clutching his stomach. “Or…dinner and come back to this later?”

Well, they could argue over how best to comb the library over ration bars back at ‘base camp’ just as well as they could here. Dinner brought a tentative resolution. They needed to find offices, and offices usually were placed near work areas on the edges of the buildings often near windows. So if not on the ground floor then possibly somewhere near the stairs on the higher floors.

After dinner they schemed about bedding. None of them had planned to stay overnight, and any furniture scattered among the stacks had been geared towards study and utility, not comfort. As it stood Pidge nearly had to beat Lance away from her backpack on pain of electrocution if he didn’t stop eyeing it.

It made her wish she’d packed up her blanket and pillow instead of leaving them in the Yellow Lion.  She could throw it at them. At one point she’d acidly suggested he use Hunk as a pillow which led to Lance sputtering, and Hunk asking what he would use a pillow. Then he snapped his fingers.

“If we pluck the ferby, we can use its feathers to stuff the duffle.”

Intrigued Lance and Hunk hovered side by side debating the best ways to skin a ferby. Pidge left them to it and retreated to her pet project, her puzzle.

She passed the golden orb from one hand to another, turned it over, and traced the etchings.

“I don’t suppose you’re an _I open at the close_ sort of puzzle?” she asked, genuinely curious. Perhaps mystic riddles superseded perfect technical application.

She glanced over at Lance and Hunk. They sat shoulder to shoulder hunched over the white feathered abomination. Hunk had a panel in its back open to the air, and Lance idly handed him tools upon request with a look of begrudging fascination. Hunk had a look of focus normally reserved for cooking, and a screwdriver gripped between his teeth. All in all it looked like a bizarre surgery.

She returned to her puzzle. The mystifying thing seemed to have three separate phases to solve. She’d solved the first and muddled her way through most of the second. At this point she’d solved the puzzle up to the point where the first layers of metal would unlock and hover in moveable orbits around the center. Moving the hovering satellites seemed to be key to unlocking the final stage.

Perhaps if she spun the orbiting ring counterclockwise sixty degrees it’d shift and unlock what she strongly suspected was a second ring from the golden plates of the sphere’s core.

The rest of the evening slipped past in a blur marked only by the slowly won progress of not two but three orbiting rings, and her slowly drooping eyelids. The inconvenient thing about the puzzle was if you spent too long thinking it’d reset to the original unsolved state. Which could be perilous for slow fingers, or anyone who rested their eyes and thought about their next move.

At some point during a necessary eye resting session the puzzle folding up like a flower and curled its petals for night. The shift knocked her over. Well, she could seriously contemplate the puzzle lying on her side and glaring at the sphere. Besides her backpack was in reach, and the floor was surprisingly comfortable.

She curled around the puzzle, head propped on her backpack, and stroked the gold surface. Sleep followed.

…

_Day 13_

Morning arrived late and with it the sound of Allura’s voice. The sound crackled but dragged Pidge out of the heavy grasp of Sleep’s heavy grasp. Hunk waved and fiddled with the Altean scanner.

“Morning Pidge. Glad to see you awake.”

“Is that Allura?” Pidge scrubbed the grit out of her eyes.

Hunk waggled his hand. “Sort of. The shielding remains impressive, but at some point during our grand _let’s flip every fuse in the fuse box_ plan, something opened up long enough for Allura to send a message.”

He poked the screen, and the static ridden message began.

“Greetings Paladins. I trust you are well and are achieving success. The Fifth Archive appeared on the Castle’s scanners as a recognizable entity. While it’s not active or reconnected to the greater network, I’m pleased with your progress. Well done.

“I will be brief. The sandstorm rages on and has engulfed much of the local area. It seems to be spreading over the region. I was able to move the Castle and raise the particle barrier over the Greater Library before the storm hit.  We are continuing on and have prioritized locating and clearing the underground access way that connects to your location. We will continue attempts to contact and retrieve you. Although I fear that will not occur until the storm’s fury relents.”

A small sigh filtered through. “Coran fears the storm itself isn’t natural. He claims to hear voices in the wind and movements beyond that of sand and air. Regarding your objective, if you’re having trouble locating the Star Room, the Attaleians adored integrating the poetic and the practical. If one wished to view and study the stars then one should be near the stars. By that custom any collection of star charts could be found in the Archive’s upper levels.”

The message cut off presumably when the shielding strengthened. Hunk played the message again. Pidge finger combed her hair and wondered if her perpetual bed head had upgraded to birds nest status or a tangle of horrors.

“Interesting. What time is it?”

“Late morning-ish. Have a granola bar.” He shoved the food under her nose.

“Late morning?! Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You weren’t responding. Besides you need rest.”

“Whose idea was that? There are floors to explore, objectives to meet, and you let me sleep in?”

“Uh.” Hunk refused to meet her eyes and gnawed on his lip.

The answer struck as a hunch.

“Lance.”

Hunk squirmed and wiggled the ration bar. “Eh—”

“It was Lance,” Pidge concluded and belatedly accepted the food. She peeled off the wrapper in quick, jerky tears, and ground the tasteless grain between her molars.

“Maybe,” Hunk allowed. “We woke up. I tinkered with Mr. Feathers. Lance fiddled around in your backpack.” He looked over at Pidge, gulped, and moved on. “Checked the scanner, played the message, and he climbed up to the fourth floor. He said he wanted to get a bird’s eye view closer to the sky.”

Pidge gulped the rest of her food, grabbed a second bar, and stared at Hunk.

He raised his hands in front of his chest. “Look, he wanted to go, and you were dead to the world. I wanted to look at the ferby. Plus, I had a thought about how to access the computer system. Huge no go so far, right?”

Pidge slowly nodded. “Yeah, nothing’s worked.”

“So when we were working on the Galra crystal you mentioned that Shiro’s the best person to have around if you want to access Galra tech. His arm lets him into the system, and at times powers up their control panels. So—,”

“You want to see if a piece of technology from the same system will have the clearance to access the local system.” Pidge nodded in thought. “But half the reason the Poke Shiro at It approach works is _because_ his arm can act as a power source.”

“Yeah, thought of that too. But consider. The terminals aren’t responding because they don’t recognize us. We aren’t in the logs and don’t have access privileges or know the admin keys.”

“So, you’re saying our problem isn’t lacking power. That still doesn’t help us. If the system won’t allow us in because we aren’t cleared to access it, how are we supposed to get access?” She tilted her head to the side. “Do you still have the Diplomatic security clearance crystal?”

“Sadly, no. It’s still wired into the door.”

In the doorframe to the door of the Archive’s main entrance on the side of the door buffeted by a sandstorm. Great. But Hunk looked way to chipper to have hit a dead end.

“You have an idea of how to get around the lack of recognition.”

“I have an idea.” Hunk picked up the feathered abomination and held it out to her. Pidge curled backwards taking in the whole, intact, and unplucked thing. “What if this has access to the system?”

Then life would truly not be fair.

“What makes you think that?”

Hunk grinned. “Watch.”

He stood up and dropped the ferby onto one the front desk’s flat panels. For a moment nothing changed. Then a light bloomed in those hideous eyes, and a string of spiraling dots slowly spun on the panel.

The circling dots sputtered, and the light died. Hunk picked up the little robot and tucked it under his arm.

“I poked it at a few other sites we found yesterday, but that’s the best reaction we’ve gotten. Lance went upstairs, and I’ve been trying to see if anything else needs to be fixed. Time wasn’t kind to our feathered friend’s insides. Lance’s going to check in soon-ish. Finish eating and we can head up to join him.”

Pidge bit off another chunk of granola.

“Bribery will only delay my wrath,” she told him and felt proud she only lost a few stray crumbs. “Not defer it.

A few hours out, and everything interesting happens. She sped up her chewing, swallowed the last of her meal, and washed it down with water. Realistically speaking they still had hours of wandering ahead of them. It’s not like she slept through something important like Lance randomly stumbling across a working master control panel while exploring the fourth floor.

…

“I can’t believe it,” Pidge said. She pinched the bride of her nose. “I can’t believe you randomly stumbled across a working master control panel while I was sleep. I can’t believe you let me sleep through it. Why didn’t you wake me up?!”

Up on the fourth floor in closet sized office off a back hall, Lance scoffed. “You needed your rest. Besides, I only found the security station. It’s not like we’ve gotten access into the network yet.”

“Access granted,” a cheery automated voiced chirped over the speakers. “Restarting in Safe Mode.”

Pidge was pretty sure if someone handed her mirror she’d see her face frozen in gaping horror.

In front of her the feathered abomination rested placidly on a luminous panel. A trifold of screens slowly flickered to life in soft blue hues. Gold glyphs scrolled across the screen on the alien system, and a blinking white cursor hovered at the top of the main screen.

Life wasn’t fair.

“Alright move,” she pushed Lance away from the control panel and started herding him and Hunk toward the door. “You had your fun. It’s my turn now. Shove off.”

“Aw, Pidge—,”

“Nope, go.”

She didn’t manage to completely banish them from the room. Hunk had latched onto the door frame and refused to move. Lance latched onto Hunk’s armor. After extracting promises that they would be _quiet_. Pidge returned to the console and surveyed her tools.

Six smaller screens, three to each side, flanked the main screen. A glowing keyboard spread out across the desk. She looked down at the keys, and sure enough, all the letters were the same language from the shelves downstairs. Touch screen most likely and no mouse. There may be a touch pad. What she would give for her laptop. Ah well.

She tapped a key. A glyph popped onscreen. Then another and another. Definitely a keyboard. Well, before you ran you walked, and before you walked you crawled. If learning this system meant she had to press every single button on the keyboard then she would do it.

Pidge cracked her knuckles and started.

The methodical button pressing hadn’t yielded significant results like pulling up any menus, a magic alien to English translation, or an enviable Attaleian Programming Languages and their Modern English Translations for Dummies. She wasn’t an idiot. She could figure this out, but it’d go faster if she had something to leverage, some background information or more tools to attack the problem.

_The Attaleians adored integrating the poetic with the practical._

“Hey, Hunk,” Pidge called over her shoulder. Having inched across the threshold and crept halfway through the room, he looked sheepish at being caught. Lance was not in sight, and beyond that she didn’t care. “When Coran got access to the Library’s system, do you remember how he got into the system?”

Hunk edged forward looking at the screen and keyboard. “He jumped straight into the language. It looked like he could read it. The alphabet didn’t faze him. Stuck?”

She scrubbed her face. “This would be so much easier if I had my laptop, or could talk to Coran and Allura, or if the letters onscreen were readable and stopped dancing. Or if we didn’t have to worry about running out of food.” She squinted at the screen. “I had an idea. Owls are important, right?”

Hunk hummed. “Oh yeah, they’re everywhere. Like that giant glowing sigil when Keith first found the Library, Mr. Feathers over there, on the walls, and I think I saw a giant owl mosaic on the first floor when I flew down from the third floor. So, yeah. Why?”

Pidge squinted at the keys and pointed at a familiar oval with just a hint of feathers labeling a key on the far right.

“Just wondering if Coran used that key to get access to the computer’s programming. I think the owl might be some symbol for wisdom and knowledge. Maybe it’ll pull up a menu or the computer’s control panel.”

“Maybe,” he said.

Sighing Pidge dropped her head in her hands and rubbed her temples. Her voice lowered to something soft and embarrassed with a tinge of frustration. She didn’t like asking for help when everyone seemed to think she would melt at the first splash of water, but the combined glow of the screens and the dark office made everything onscreen too bright and swimmy.

“So, I might be a tad, a bit, a smidge sensitive to light. Still. But only a little.” She pointed. “Does that look like an owl to you?”

Bumping up against her shoulder, Hunk leaned forward. “If I squint.”

“Good because I am.”

Eyes squinted at the screen, Pidge leaned over and tapped.

For a moment their spirits rose as the stylized owl logo flashed onscreen wiping away the senseless squiggles. Then it vanished, and the screens went blank. They were still on, but the text disappeared. Pidge reached out and pressed one button then another. When that didn’t work she tapped the screen.

No response.

She slumped back into her chair. “Great. Back to square one.”

“We’ll figure something out. Between you and me we’ll have it conquered by dinner tomorrow, easy.”

Pidge sighed and brought up her map of the Archive. She’d been so sure she was onto something this time. She squinted at the screen. A blue cursor was way over in the middle of the stacks. It kind of looked like Lance was headed toward a fuzzy area on the map. What was so interesting over there?

A rustle tickled her left ear, then a square lit up. Off to the side Mr. Feathers, aka the feathered abomination, stirred. Its wings twitched, and its eyes blinked open. The flat panel it rested on glowed a soft blue light, and a halo of alien script rotated around its feet.

It blinked, and those robotic eyes focused right on them.

“Identify yourselves.”

 Pidge swallowed down a newly formed lump in her throat. Oh quiznack, even the voice sounded like a ferby. Granted the diction, tone, and vocabulary sounded more like a tetchy computer then Mr. Ferman, but heavens above, the ferby was looking at them.

Hunk smiled. “Greetings, I’m Hunk, and this is Pidge. We come in peace.”

Somehow she resisted the urge to elbow Hunk or bury her head in her hands. Instead Pidge focused on the awake and aware and talking robot. Any other time she’d be thrilled, but not with this robot.

Its pupils shrunk, and its gaze moved to Hunk. “Entities _Hunk_ and _Pidge_ are unknown. The Archive is closed to the public. Please identify and state your security code.”

“We’re Pidge, Hunk, and Lance, and we’re the Paladins of Voltron of the Green, Yellow, and Blue Lions,” Hunk said, apparently attempting to channel his inner Allura. He also seemed inordinately charmed by Mr. Feathered Abomination. “We mean you no harm, and come seeking wisdom and knowledge.”

Hunk glanced over at her. Pidge nodded and inched toward Mr. Feathers.

The feathered abomination stared first at Hunk then at Pidge, judging them almost.

“Voice print not recognized. Paladins _Pidge, Hunk,_ and _Lance_ are not recognized. The Archive is closed to the public. Please identify and state your security code.”

Pidge perked up. Time to try a new tactic.

“Actually, we need help. We’re lost. We’re supposed to be in the main Library, but a sandstorm hit, and it’s trapped us here. Can you direct us to the connecting passage to the main library? Please?”

Off to the side Hunk flashed her a quick thumbs up.

Mr. Feathers remained silent, an unblinking entity. Then a bright light flashed out from its eyes and ran across Pidge and Hunk’s faces.

“Initiating scan,” Mr. Feathers intoned. “Scan complete.  Entities _Pidge, Hunk,_ and _Lance_ are not authorized.  Voice print recognition failed. Security codes incorrect. Intruders are detected in the Library. Security is activated.”

The twists of hope and anxiety knotted in her gut dropped like a rock in a lake.

The feathered abomination spread its maw and squawked. The screens in front of them turned a deep red, and the room’s lights began rhythmically flashing in red in time with the blaring alarm that filled the halls.

“Security activated. Intruders are detected in the Library. Intruders will be terminated.”

For a moment Pidge gaped in horror and could only manage a small, “Oh, quiznack.”

Then Hunk, bayard in hand but inactive, grabbed her arm and pulled her out the door.

Eyes bloody red, Mr. Feathers spread his wings and followed.


	7. Chapter 7

 

Leaving Hunk and Pidge to poke at the computer systems, Lance focused on a different area of their mission. Finding an up to date star map.

Following Allura’s advice about Attaleian logic he roamed the top floor of the Archive. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for exactly. Maybe a planetarium or an observatory? If there were any, they weren’t near the stairs, or the outer paths that overlooked the first floor and stylized owl mosaic.

He checked his map and headed toward away from the security room. There seemed to be a large circular room at the end of the fourth floor. It was further in the rock but near the slashed symbol that marked the staircases. It might be a lead.

First Lance had to walk past a lot of books, and bookshelves, and those creepy statues. He paused and looked at the wall. Between a new row of shelves and a fork in the path there was a wall panel that looked remarkably like light switches. Not the switches that poked out of the wall begging you to flip them on and off for a brilliant haunted house experience. But the tall ones that looked like a minimalist seesaw and blended into their surroundings.

There were five of them all in a row, and they were begging for attention.

“Let’s see,” Lance mused.

Flicking the first two had no response. The third caused something in the ceiling to shift, and the roar of moving air got louder. Nothing interest happened until he pressed the fifth switch. Something metallic crunched and groaned in the ceiling, and a lot of metals panels pulled back revealing a skylight.

There wasn’t much to see outside, just a dark dust cloud filling the air and blocking the sun. That and the howls of the wind grew louder.

A light flashed on his left gauntlet, and he pulled up his holoscreen. A large window pulled up, and a familiar, beautiful face with gorgeous blue eyes filled the screen.

“Lance!”

Something warm and gooey fluttered in his stomach, and his heartbeat stuttered at the happy tone and the delighted smile.

“Allura!”

For a moment all Lance could do was bask in Allura’s the honey tones. She smiled brightly in obvious pleasure of seeing his magnificent visage. The warm, gooey feeling got worse.

“Lance, are you paying attention?”

_Be cool, Lance. Be cool._

“Sorry Beautiful, did the sun come out from behind a cloud, or are you just that happy to see me?”

“No, Lance. The dust storm seems to be waning, but the sun hasn’t come out yet.”

Lance gifted her with a roguish smile.

“But seriously, how are you calling?”

The somewhat dry look lifted from her face, and Allura smiled.

“Well, I’ve been monitoring the Archive on the Castle’s scanners, and it started reconnecting to the Library system. It hasn’t synchronized yet. Even so well done. I knew you could do it.”

Lance took that moment of Allura’s happy face and praise and tucked it away.

“Well, I am pretty awesome, but I can’t take all the credit. I found this old security room with a working control panel, and let Hunk and Pidge work their nerd magic on it.”

“Well, they’re succeeding.” Allura frowned in concentration. “I’m not registering them on the Castle’s scanners, although I am getting a scrambled feed from a BLIP sensor.”

Lance shrugged. “Hunk said the place is like a giant Faraday cage. Maybe opening the skylight helped? Well, it’s not open, but part of the ceiling pulled back to reveal all these windows. So maybe that’s letting the signal through?”

“Perhaps. Let me pull up Coran. He, Shiro, and Keith are exploring the lower floors of the Library. They managed to raise the shelves out of storage, but the entire building is in preservation mode. We can’t access anything yet.”

“That sucks.”

A second window popped up, and Shiro’s face filled the screen.

“Any updates, Princess?” He noticed Lance and smiled a large, relieved grin spread across his face. “Lance. It’s good to see you. How are you and Hunk? How’s Pidge?”

Lance felt his spine straighten. “It’s been a nightmare. Everything’s locked down. We didn’t have running water until Hunk got one of the toilets working late last night. Finding a functional computer that isn’t locked down under ten different types of security has been difficult. But we’re all ok. We have tons of supplies because Pidge is a sneaky packrat, and I’m dying for a hot meal and shower.”

Coran popped up beside Shiro. If Lance squinted he could almost make out the back of Mullet’s mullet. The entire crew then.

“But we have food and water. I was super awesome and found a security room with a working control station. Hunk and Pidge are being awesome nerds and getting the system back online.”

“They appear to be in a more heavily shielded area of the Archive, but Lance reports them to be well,” Allura added.

Shiro nodded and looked at Lance. “How’s morale?”

“Hunk’s doing ok. He was a bit shaky at first but knuckled down and focused. The only problem we’ve had is, well, Pidge. She wasn’t supposed to sneak away. She’s grumpy, but that’s to be expected. Except, she’s been tetchy, mostly to me.” Lance’s shoulders slumped. “She’s threatened to shock me three different times in the last day. I don’t think she’s forgiven me for, you know.”

Being an utter idiot and not paying attention to where he kicked the training room drones. Until he heard her scream and turned in time to see her land with a sickening thud. Running across the training room to her still form, and Pidge’s lack of response was a moment he never wanted to experience again.

“I’ve tried to make up for it. Be a better friend, look out for her, make sure she doesn’t push herself while she’s recovering. But nothing I do works. I try to protect her, and she tries to take my head off. She’s so snippy, and uh! Nothing I do is good enough.”

Not like that was news.

He glanced at Allura’s concerned face and blushed. Showing weakness and vulnerability in front of the elegant, kickass princess. Not Cool. Congratulations Lance.

He scoffed. “But whatever. I’ll deal. She can’t stay mad forever.”

“Lance,” Shiro cut in. “Give it time. Everyone has been…overzealous looking after Pidge during her recovery. She needs space and time. Look out for her, but give her room to do what she can.”

“Yeah, but—,” But he couldn’t shake the memory of what Pidge said after Coran and Allura decided she would spend the night in the medical wing.

Standing in the Infirmary waiting to hear the damage, and how much he’d screwed up this time had been horrible. He hadn’t been able to look up from his shoes waiting for the verdict to fall. The worst part came later.

Pidge was sharp, and when she was mad she was not shy about sharing. She’d been livid when she found it he was responsible for her fall. Even the bump on her head and concussion hadn’t kept her from laying into him.

“You’re not helping,” she said. “Nothing you’ve done has helped. You’re so loud. And you never stop talking.” Pidge jabbed a finger at Lance’s face. “This is your fault. Everything hurts because of you. I’m injured because _you_ weren’t aware of your surroundings, _Tailor_.”

Twelve days later and he still hadn’t shaken those words off or the painful coil in his gut.

“I’ll try. What are you guys doing? Have you found the super secret underground passage way? Have you found our sweet ticket back to hot food and showers?”

Coran jumped in. “We’ve found the access way room. It’s in one of the subbasements. The basement has paths to all the archives, not just yours. They’re locked down and blocked off by blast doors. We’re trying to find a way to unlock the path that leads to you, but system access has been troubling.”

“Any luck finding the star map collection?” Allura asked.

Lance shrugged. “Sort of? I may have found a lead, and I was on route when I uncovered the skylight. It’s farther in the Archive though, and it may be shielded.”

“So you don’t think you’ll maintain the connection if you move,” Coran concluded. “You might be able to boost your armor’s signal to reach through the shielding now that the skylight’s open.”

Allura said, “Actually, I’ve been able to take several scans of the archive with the Castle and the BLIP’s sensor readings. I’ll check the floor plan for anything useful. Until then check in with Hunk and Pidge and continue looking for an up to date map.”

“Roger, roger—,”

The lights on the floor flashed and a loud repetitive alarm blared over the intercom. Lance clutched his ears at the piercing sound.

On screen Allura looked frantic. “The Archive security is activating. And not just in the Archive, but in the greater Library as well.”

Sure enough behind Shiro and Coran, the lighting started flashing. A distant rumble carried over the transmission along with movement in the background, and a deep, furious roar bellowed over the connection.

Onscreen a look of fear and grim resolve flashed across Shiro’s face. Shiro’s arm lit up with a purple glow. Something moved behind them in the shadows.

A small gibbering part of Lance’s brain shoved a familiar quote into his head.

_The ground shakes. Drums…drums in the deep. We cannot get out. A shadow lurks in the dark. We cannot get out…_

“They are coming,” Lance finished. “Sweet cheese and crackers. You found the balrog!”

The video cut, and Lance realized he had bigger problems.

Across the way were the more shelves. Not a big deal, there were shelves everywhere on this floor. But one of the odder parts of the Archive was the décor, aka, the creepy robot statues. They were stationed at regular intervals among the stacks, along the walkways, corridors, and at the main entrances, exits, and stair cases like the ceremonial honor guard they symbolized.

There was one right across from Lance nestled between two bookshelves. And it wasn’t a motionless symbol anymore.

Two neon blue lights flared to life in its eyes. The statue lifted its head and looked right at Lance. It lifted its large cudgel out of parade rest and swung it forward in an offensive form. Then, looking at Lance the entire time, the Guardian charged.

Not a fool, Lance ran.

...

(@[Mintless](http://feedthemintless.tumblr.com/post/163494368349/the-library-kya-here-come-my-piece-for-the))

…

Running for their lives was terrifying frankly. Not that Pidge had much time to think.

Hunk pulled her out of the security room. Down the hall stood one of the Guardians, except it was active, online. Cudgel clenched in one hand the Guardian stalked the hall. Once they crossed its sight line, it looked up, and ran right for them.

Hunk pushed Pidge behind him and opened fire.  The barrage tore through the Guardian, but by the time it curled over and the light left its eyes, it had crossed half the distance toward them. Overhead that karking Mr. Feathers circled shrieking its head off. Two more Guardians rounded the bend at the far end of the hall on their left, and a third appeared at the closer hall on their right.

Pidge activated her shield and bayard. “Hunk, on your right.”

Hunk pivoted and mowed down the Guardian. Pidge had already started running forward. She jumped over the smoking skeleton and yelled, “Run.”

He darted after her, but they still had the two Guardians behind them. Pidge thought fast.

“If we can get in the air, we can lose them. It’s not like they can fly. I didn’t see any tech similar to the Altean hover technology.”

Hunk grunted then powered forward, scooped her up, and threw her over his shoulder.

She squawked. “Hunk!”

“Check the map and find a way out,” Hunk puffed and poured on the speed.

Pidge had an uncomfortably close view of the two Guardians bearing down on them. But the perks of flying the Green Lion and forming Voltron included learning how to think under pressure, and how to wad up her panic and shove it to a different spot in her head.  Compartmentalization and detachment at its finest. Except Green had better armor and more protection then Hunk’s stomach jostling run.

“Map.” Hunk reminded.

Right, the map. Pidge wadded up her fear, and let the adrenaline do its work. The display lit up, and wow, that was a massive amount of white dots swarming the floor. She cycled through the third and second floors and squinted at the readout on the fourth.

“They’re everywhere. They’re concentrated in the stacks, but there are also units lining the main passageways, and some of them are moving across the space that lets us look down to the main floor.”

“They’re flying?”

“Yes, not all, but some. It looks localized, like the ones closest are coming to us. The ones further away aren’t moving.”

But there were still a worrying amount of white dots headed toward the corridor their hall merged into. Two behind, three ahead, and this wasn’t good. Hunk was good for steady suppressing fire or filling the air with a barrage of shots. And Pidge, well, Pidge wasn’t in fighting shape, especially against robots that were taller, faster, and stronger then her.

“I wish Keith was here,” Pidge said, horrified at how meek she sounded.

A moving blue icon raised her spirits. She opened the comm channel.

“Lance, we’ve got two hostiles on our six and three at our twelve. Set up suppressing fire on the bogeys at twelve, and Hunk will blast your tail.”

“Ten-four.”

“Hunk, when the hall ends, fly in the air and blast the ‘bot behind Lance.”

“Got it. I’m throwing you. Fastball special.”

Oh great, the fastball special.

“You do that with Keith!” she shrieked. “Not me.”

The hall ended, and an open skylight filled the ceiling over the center cutout overlooking the ground floor.

“Going up,” Hunk bellowed. He reached over his shoulder and flung her at a flying, robed guardian variation she had never seen before. It had swords instead of hands, and she hated Hunk even as he activated his jetpack, summoned his shield, and bashed the flying horror off course and away from her.

Pidge curled and flipped and shot her bayard into the ceiling and swung across to the far railing. A sharp pain ripped through her temples. Ooh, flips were not part of the limited duty Coran had assigned for her. But the hallway was currently robot free. Small favors.

Her new position gave her the perfect vantage point to watch the unfolding drama. Hunk went from bashing the floating, robed Guardian with his shield to clubbing it with his cannon. A spray of blue shots peppered the guardian’s back. From this angle she could see Lance sighting down his rifle and hunched over the rail at his snipers nest.  Three smoking robots were slumped in a loose pile in the corridor just shy of where Hunk barreled out. She could also see the guardian running up behind him cudgel in hand. The guardian Lance was trusting them to take care of, so he could cover them.

“Lance, duck and cover!”

Activating his shield, Lance dropped and protected his head. Fully in sync Hunk raised his cannon, sighted down towards the guardian charging Lance, and opened fire. Once the ‘bot fell, Lance waved at them.

“Keep moving people. The way is clear behind me. Let’s go.”

Pidge spared a brief glance at the map. The area by Lance was clear, but something was drawing more of the guardians on the floor back their way towards _her_. The answer flew in her face as a ball of squawking feathers.

“Intruder alert. Intruders detected. The Archive has been breached. Intruders will be terminated.”

Shield up Pidge guarded her head and stared down Mr. Feathers. _Oh no you don’t._ She smashed the top of her shield into Mr. Feather’s flight path flinging him against the wall, then jumped on him, and punched with crackling electricity.

The spiel and squawks died. Any other time Pidge might stop and relish in defeating the abomination, but Mr. Feather’s alert had drawn two more guardians to the balcony path, a runner and a floater. They were coming for her.

Activating her jetpack Pidge shot down the hall using the extra speed boost move closer to backup. The guardians were incredibly silent. They didn’t speak, and their limbs didn’t creak. Yet when they ran you could hear the footsteps loud, swift clanks of metal against metal steadily gaining.

“Guys, two on my six.”

“We see them. Cut your jets and drop.”

She tucked and rolled hugging the ground. Another stab of pain lanced through her temples, and a deep, pulsing pounding hammered away inside her skull. Just up the path Lance and Hunk braced and fired. She could hear the energy blasts hit the guardians, and felt the vibrations in the ground when they toppled and fell. Then Lance pulled her off the ground.

“Hunk, any incoming?”

“Some are moving in the far halls, but if we get out sight we should be able to shake them. I think Mr. Feathers was calling them to our location. Now that he’s gone, it should buy us time.”

Lance nodded. “Right, let’s find shelter and regroup from there. I know a place. C’mon.”

“Right,” Hunk nodded. He looked over at Pidge. “Pidge, you with us? Pidge?”

Deep breath in and out. “Yeah, I’m with you.” And if her voice shook they didn’t mention it. Although, they both looked extra serious.

Lance hooked his left hand in hers and started jogging forward. “I already shot the security, so it should be clear.”

Pidge let him drag her along. Normally she’d insist on moving on her own power, but the Archive was a sensory nightmare. The flashing lights and blaring alarms on par with obnoxious fire drills added a new wobbliness in her head.

It was comforting to know her friends were near and had her back. She tightened her grip on Lance’s hand and focused on the path ahead. She couldn’t ignore how each footstep jarred the pounding in her head.

…

Lance hustled them into ‘The Circular Room’, eyes sharp and checking in each corner. He exchanged a look with Hunk. Perhaps it was part of being the Legs of Voltron or their friendship, but that wordless exchange was all they needed to split off and circle the room, marking the exits, and checking for unwelcome guests.

Headache pulsing in time with her heart, Pidge watched the hall outside. The Circular Room was meant for addressing a crowd. A short stair cut through three descending rows that circled around a central podium. It was clearly meant for crowds to view some sort of video or projection or even a speaker

At Lance’s all clear she jogged the short stair and sat down on the lowest level. At least in the room the outside din was muffled, and none of the lights flashed with the alarm.

“Ok, what’s going on?”

Hunk filled him in describing activating Mr. Feathers, and their failed attempt to gain access to the system. In turn Lance briefed them on finding the skylight and Allura’s call.

“So we managed to reconnect the Archive to the Library’s system, trip security, and initiate lockdown,” Hunk said. “Now what?”

“We get out. We can’t use the lower tunnels. I think Coran, Shiro, and Keith ran into another security robot. Plus, they hadn’t opened the path to our location, and I do not what to get trapped in a tunnel being chased by the guardian robots and a balrog.”

“A balrog? Like an actual Tolkien balrog?” Hunk asked.

Lance shrugged. “Dunno, but it was loud. May have been a rancor.”

“Great. So, escape through the tunnels is out.”

“Which leaves what, going out the front door?”

“Or we could look for a rooftop exit.”

“Even if we did get out, there’s still that dust storm to worry about. Allura said it was dying, but it isn’t over yet.” Lance, rifle pointing at the ground but the butt propped against his shoulder, looked over towards Pidge. “Pidge, you’re quiet. Especially for you.”

She didn’t care. At that moment Pidge had her helmet off and had buried her face in her hands. Her palms covered her eyes, and her fingers curled into her bangs. It blocked out any light and let her eyes rest. Seeing her hunched over, elbows braced on her knees, and head burrowed in her hands probably wasn’t a reassuring sight for her squad. Both Hunk and Lance hurried over.

“Pidge, what’s wrong?”

So many things. The Library’s guardians were sentry droids. Sometime in the past ten thousand years the Attaleians brought their ceremonial guard back into active service. There was a host of hostiles that stood between them and an exit. They had no backup, and somewhere elsewhere their friends were in trouble.

“Guys, I can’t do that again. My head feels weird. You know that fuzzy, ringing feeling you get that makes you realize you’re about to faint? Or throw up? I have that, plus a headache.”

“Lemme see,” Hunk coaxed and gently pried off her hands. “Your pupils are even. And you’re coherent. Are you dizzy, disoriented?”

“No, but it’s so loud out there.”

“Noise sensitivity, right.” He winced. “The lightshow isn’t helping either. Can you walk?”

“I walked here didn’t I?” She pulled back her hands. “However we get out we should avoid fighting. We need to sneak out.”

Lance nodded pulled up his map. He pointed toward their location onscreen. “I have an idea for that. Somewhere in this room is a staircase. It seems to go down to at least the second floor, and it’s off the main paths. If we can find it, we’re that much closer to the exit.”

“Are we going out the front door?”

“I haven’t found any other major exit. The only other option would be to blow out the skylight, but I don’t know if we can damage whatever material it’s made of. It’s withstanding a sandstorm right now.”

Pidge squinted at the map. “Think it’s some sort of emergency exit?”

“Maybe? It’s better than trying to shoot our way out going down the main stairs.”

Very true.

“Alright, we find the stairs, sneak downstairs, and sneak out.”

“What about the sandstorm?” Hunk asked. “Getting lost in that would be bad.”

“Well, if we’re outside and in danger the Yellow Lion should come to help. It’d be a lot easier to reach us outside, then if we got pinned down in here,” Pidge offered.

Hunk looked green. “I guess.”

Lance gripped Hunk’s shoulder. “Courage, Hunk. This is no time to get creeped out. Our dungeon crawl has turned into an escort mission. Pidge, we’ll protect you with our lives. Try to keep up and not get hit in the head.”

She rolled her eyes. “On it.”

Lance frowned. “I’m serious Pidge. After you got hurt Shiro gave us a lecture about what to expect while you’re recovering and gave us some background on concussions.  Like, how after your first concussion it gets easier for a second to occur. He told us about second impact concussions, and how they’re very serious and can be very lethal. We’re all getting out of here, and we’re all getting out of here alive and uninjured.”

They made quick work searching the chamber for the stairs. After finding where on the map the stairs were supposed to be, Pidge argued the merits of cutting their way out, but Hunk managed to explore the room’s podium long enough to reveal a hidden panel of buttons. After their last button mashing results they decided to experiment with caution. Lance watched the hall from the door, and Pidge and Hunk coordinated the button pressing.

When a hidden panel slid back revealing a trap door on the far side of the room, they cut through the lock, and slid down into a narrow stair. Lance scouted ahead, Pidge followed behind, and Hunk brought up the rear.

They went down three floors, and the stairs kept descending past the point on the map that marked the ground floor. There had been exit doors on the fourth and second floors, but none on third or ground floor. The descent into poorly lit gloom made Pidge’s stomach twist. On the one hand everything was dark and quiet, and there was enough insulation in the rock walls to muffle the blaring alarms from the higher floors. On the other hand it was _too_ dark and _too_ quiet. Not that she’d mentioned it out loud, but if Hunk’s darting eyes were any indication, it unnerved him too.

It almost made her wonder if there was a balrog waiting down here for them. It didn’t help that the further down they went the worse the shielding grew. Their map was glitching and lagged marking moving objects.

Lance crept back up the stairs bayard out but pointed at the floor. The trio huddled together as he silently motioned _door_ , _no guards_ , and _no eyes_. Hunk pulled up the archive map and pointed at the main entrance then switched to the map of the second floor, and pointed up the stairs.

Pidge shook her head and pointed at the white dots that marked the guardians positions stationed throughout the second floor. At least six lined the corridor that the stairs exit passed.

This led to more hand gestures and empathetic pointing as the three tried to silently plot out their next move. The silent theater probably carried on longer then was wise, but the tableau broke up only when a muffled beep sounded, and a door swung open and slammed shut just floors above their head followed by the sound of steady footsteps. The three shared wide-eyed looks of horror.

The footsteps were slow and clearly walking, not the _I have you now_ run all the previous guardians used, but still the footsteps were heading towards them. With a quick gesture the three silently crept down the stairs towards Lance’s door.

It was locked because nothing about this trip was easy, yet Pidge wouldn’t take that as a no. Elbowing Lance out of the way she activated her bayard and cut down the middle right in the seam where the two door panels met. The look on Lance’s face indicated he didn’t think cutting open a door they wouldn’t be able to shut was a good idea, but hey, if he felt that way, then he could think of a faster way to get out of sight.

Hunk pushed the door open just enough for all three to slip through, and then he and Lance pushed the two panels together long enough for Pidge to start welding it shut. All the while the slow march of footsteps grew closer and closer. She hadn’t gotten the door completely shut before Hunk grabbed her beneath her arms and tucked her away in the corner on top a stack of crates. Forming his cannon he stood in front of her and watched the door. Peering around him she could just make out Lance on the opposite corner with his rifle drawn and pointed at the door waiting for the guardian to get to the door.

For several long moments the pound of her heart filled her ears and just underneath she tracked the metallic footsteps walk slowly up to the door and pause for the longest set of heartbeats. There was another muffled beep. The door panels strained but shut. Another beep and the footsteps slowly marched away.

Pidge slumped against the wall and gulped in deep breaths. “If this keeps up, I don’t know if my headache can take this. My heart’s racing so fast I can barely breathe,” she wheezed out.

The entire experience was almost on par with sneaking around the Castle after Sendak captured Lance and Shiro. Then Pidge had been left to rely on Allura’s guidance and Rover. Expect she hadn’t had a splitting headache.

“No way,” Hunk breathed. “Those are a lot of boxes. Do you think we found their storage room?”

Pidge looked at the room properly. It was massive and filled with crates. A few looked like the stasis storage boxes, like the ones on the Castle that stored the extra Altean clothing. Allura and Coran dug them out of storage to supplement their new Paladins’ wardrobes. At time they had were the clothes on their back, and whatever was stuffed in their pockets or backpacks. Out of the five of them Pidge had more of her material possessions in space by sheer inability to let her backpack out of her sight. A trend she’d continued. Even during the harrowing activating security and escaping the angry robots she’d managed to keep track of her backpack.

Speaking of, she fished out a few water pouches, passed one to Hunk, tossed the second to Lance, and worked on the third.

“So, do we want to look for an exit or go through the boxes? Maybe we could find something useful?”

“Hmm,” Lance wondered. “If I was an exit where would I be?”

“Along one of the walls I’d think,” Hunk said. “More importantly do you think one of the patrols is going to come in here? How far do you think they reach? Is it really a good idea to just be standing here?”

Pidge tossed them ration bars. “Standing still, no. Keeping up our energy, yes. And I don’t know, but I’d rather be a moving target then a sitting duck.”

“Same.” Lance agreed.

Back in formation they wound their way through the stacks picking the path closest to the far wall. The scenery amounted to walls, boxes, the odd alien packing crates, and yet more boxes. Pidge kept her eye on the map. The BLIP sensor still on the first floor didn’t have the power to properly scan the basement, but there was a general outline of the floor itself which could be overlaid with the first floor’s floor plan.

If she squinted one of the fuzzy squiggles on screen almost looked like that dash the indicated an exit, and there were a few sharp protrusions on the map that marked small niches and nooks on the same side of the building as the main entrance.

“I think there’s something up ahead on the left,” she said.

Lance nodded. “I’ll scout ahead.”

Pidge chewed on her thumb. The glove kept her from chewing her nail outright but there was something on screen that nagged at her. A small green dot. Not a guardian mark, or even her own position marker, but one of the green dots that haphazardly sprung up on the map during her explorations with Hunk yesterday. It hadn’t amounted to anything, but they’d always seemed to pop up near a computer cluster.

Oh.

“I found an access node,” she hissed and darted down the way.

Hunk hissed and hurried after. “Pidge, no. We haven’t cleared the area.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she hissed back but summoned her bayard. No point being too crazy. She jumped up on the side of the boxes and stalked forward parallel to the path. She crawled the last distance to the point where she could look over the green dot’s site on the map. She peered over the edge and checked all visible paths. Nothing.

Dropping down she scanned the wall, caught a glimpse of green, and pushed aside a stack of boxes far enough to clear the sight of waist high table with a flat screen embedded in the surface. A flat screen with spinning dots circling around the screen.

A soft tap of footsteps jogged toward her. Not metallic, so Lance or Hunk.

“I think I found something. There was another door, and it opened into small room with ladder rungs on the side. The rungs go up at least to the ground floor if not higher. It’s a lot like the room Keith found. Pidge, what are you doing?”

“Being reckless,” Hunk added from behind her. “Pidge, we found an exit. Let’s go.”

Picky, picky.

“I’m not leaving without the information we came for,” she said and tapped the screen. The screen cleared, and that blue owl sigil filled the background. Ugh, still locked.

“Pidge, we’re not leaving without you. If Hunk has to carry you out then that’s what we will do.”

“Bite me,” she hissed. “I’m not leaving until I’ve tried. I know it’s a long shot, but I refuse to leave this fubar situation behind without something to show for it. The feathered abomination set off security because we didn’t have security codes. What if the system works like the Galra system?”

“Come again? We can’t read Galra.”

“No, we can’t. But Shiro’s arm is Galra tech, and that allows us to interface with the Galra systems and gather intel. We need a guardian. More specifically, we need its arm.”

Hunk and Lance looked like she’d slapped them in the face with a fish.

“Oh, come on. You’ve both shot plenty. All we have to do is shoot one down. I’ll cut off its arm, and we’ll attempt to gain system access. If it doesn’t work, I’ll go. No fighting.”

“This is a bad idea, Pidge.” Hunk said.

“It really isn’t. We go back to the exit and head up to the second floor. I’ll lure it into the stairwell, and you and Lance will catch it in the crossfire. Then off with its hand, and we’re golden.”

Hunk seemed to be weighing the merits of carrying her out of the basement kicking and screaming for her own good. Lance, Lance actually seemed to be thinking over her plan. He had the driest look of pure skepticism.

Biting her lip, Pidge flashed them both her biggest, watery eyes. “I know I can do this. I know _we_ can do this.”

“This is a stupid plan,” Lance finally said. “I’ll only agree _if_ we use Hunk as bait.”

“What?!”

“Really?”

“Lance!”

“Hunk, my man, you can bite back, and I’ll have your back the entire time. Besides, I’m curious about what we’ll find.”

“Ugh, sometimes I hate you two reckless idiots.”

The plan unfolded far smoother than it should by any rights, but all played their parts beautifully. They waited for a patrol knock on their door and then head back toward the second floor. Hunk darted out, screamed in genuine terror loud enough to draw the guardian’s attention, and darted back into the storage room. The guardian fell to Lance’s shooting and Hunk’s blazing defense. Pidge got to harvest one robot arm. She briefly considered taking the head as well, but ultimately decided it as too creepy even for her.

Using the guardian tech to access the Archive’s system worked like a charm. The locked owl screen cleared away, but the three faced the same problem as before, unfamiliarity with an alien computer language and a severe time crunch.

“Let’s see, I grabbed some of the data crystals Allura mentioned the Alteans used like flash drives,” Pidge said fishing one of the small thumbnail sized crystal out of her bag. “I think she said all I’d have to do was put it on a compatible surface, and the download would begin on its own.”

Hunk watched her back, and Lance was standing further down the path closer to the exit ladder.

“Sounds cool,” Hunk said. “Why haven’t we used it before to get Galra intel?”

“Because she didn’t show it to me until after we left Arus. And I did try to use to it on Sendak’s Galra crystal, but it was corrupted. The Galra R&D probably patched up their security against Altean cyber attacks. And it wouldn’t be a good idea to risk it on a mission untested.”

“Like you’re doing now?”

“We aren’t behind Galra lines. Why not now?”

“Because security is patrolling and willing to smash us into fine paste if they catch us?”

“Everyone’s a critic.” On screen the area around the crystal lit up, and a transfer loading bar popped up onscreen. “I think it’s working.”

The transfer completed, and Pidge pocketed the crystal. “Ok, let’s go.”

She ignored the gusty sigh of relief and headed towards Lance’s exit. All went well up to the point they’d made it to the ladder. At that point a brief debate about the climbing order popped up with Lance wanting to take the lead, and Pidge arguing that with her bayard she could cut anything, and Lance would do best covering the rear. Hunk was neutral but just wanted to get out. The quiet whispers and hand waving might have continued on for several long minutes if the distant sound of door panels whooshing open and closing didn’t reach their ears. The steady marching pace of metallic clanks from the far end of the room slowly marched their way.

Lance pushed Hunk forward, pointing to the ladder, and shoved Pidge up behind Hunk. He waited pressed against the wall, rifle out, and listened to the sound of those footsteps draw near.

Pidge started climbing up the rungs behind Hunk. “Lance,” she hissed. “If you don’t stay with us, we’ll get separated.”

Nodding he deactivated his bayard and started climbing behind them.

The shaft took them out of sight of the ladder room and its door, but all three kept their ears trained for any sign that the patrolling ‘bot had noticed them. At the top of the ladder, the metal door was both shut and locked. Pidge had to climb around Hunk then cling to his back like a koala in order to get the leverage and arm space needed to carve out a hole for all of them to squeeze through.

They didn’t let her out first. Too dangerous even if she was closet and the smallest. Nope, she got to cling to the side of the rungs, so Lance could climb up, out, and case the area. It was a long eternity before Lance reappeared and gestured for Pidge to come up next.

“I could have left first,” she whispered.

Lance snorted, using his free hand to help her up and out. “What sort of escort mission would this be if we let you wander off?”

Backpack slung over her shoulder it thumped reassuringly against her hip. “Someone who trusted my skills and abilities.”

“Pidge, I have great respect for your ferocious intelligence and sneaky ways, but how’s the headache?”

Thumping away like a windup monkey with a sledgehammer.

“It’s fine.”

Another snort. “Yeah, right.”

Hunk squeezed out of the hole. “Ah, yes, the sand storm’s gone, but where are we?”

Pidge looked around. They weren’t outside the main entrance or in the canyon path that led towards it, but the rock face was the same color and the same height of the canyon wall that the Archive was carved into.

“According to the floor overlay, our exit should be west of the main entrance. If we head east following the rock, then we should reach that great plaza and the main entrance. We can retrace our steps from there,” Pidge said.

“Or Yellow can come find us,” Hunk said. He spread his arms and shouted to the sky. “Yellow Lion, Yellow Lion come over.”

Lance jerked away. “Uh, Hunk, I’m not sure we should yell too close to the Archive while there’s still a way inside.”

“ I know the lions respond if we’re in danger, but we’ve been in danger a lot over the last few hours. If Yellow was going to come he would have already.” Pidge swung gripped her backpack straps. “I guess we should start walking. Helmet says east is that way.”

They hadn’t covered much distance hiking over the rock causeway when the stray pebbles littering the ground began to jump and shake rattling across the ground. The shaking traveled up their feet and into their knees, Thick blue lines raced across the rock headed east toward the Archive’s main entrance.

Pidge wobbled and fell back into Hunk. He crouched forward and braced.

“I-I don’t like the l-look of this,” he said. The shakes and vibrations filled the air so that every word spoken rattled and wavered.

“What’s going on?”

Their gauntlets flashed, and all three of their holoscreens opened, and Allura’s face appeared.

“Paladins, we have trouble. The Library’s defenses have been activated.”

“Yeah, we know,” Lance shouted. “We’ve been playing cat and mouse with them for the last hours.”

“Not just the internal security defenses, but the external ones as well,” Allura said. “We’re pinned down by some of the greater guardian robots.”

“Galra robot beasts?”

“No, they are not Galra tech, but Attaleian. It seems—,” She flinched and crouched over, and the blare of alarms carried over the line. “The external defenses outside the Archive are activating. Get to the Yellow Lion and return to the Castle. Find cover, quickly.”

“Ten- four.”

“On it.”

“Buddy!”

The Yellow Lion ran down the rock highway straight for them. It was the happiest Pidge was to see a mechanical robot creature charge right toward them at high speeds in hours.

“Alright, guys. We’re almost out. Get to the Yellow Lion,” Lance yelled. “Hunk, you first.” The three sprinted forwarded.

The Yellow Lion skidded to a stop and bent over, mouth open and ramp lowered. The shakes in the ground grew bad enough that Pidge nearly fell over halfway up the ramp. She managed to regain her footing long enough to trip inside. Hunk ran for the cockpit.

Lance helped her into the cockpit, and tucked her behind Hunk’s chair. He crouched down, pulled off her helmet, and stuck a cluster of fingers under her nose.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

She swatted the fingers aside. “What’s on screen?”

Hunk pulled Yellow into the air and checked the scanners. “I’m getting one hostile, one large hostile, approaching from the right—wow.”

A red laser flashed across the screen just skimming Yellow’s nose. Hunk jerked left, and the change of direction sent Pidge toppling into Lance. He caught her, and they both peered out the windows of Yellow’s cockpit.

There was giant robot scorpion crawling out of the ground near the Archive. In fact it was scurrying along the side of the rock, and shooting lasers from the tail. The carapace was a dark brown, and blue lines were carved into the casing reflecting the architecture in the Library and the Attaleian alphabet, curls and dots and glyphs.

“All right guys, as much as I’d like to play, let’s get out of here.”

Yellow leaped into the air, and they rocketed toward the Castle.

Pidge kept track of the scorpion ‘bot on Yellow’s screens. It pursued them for a distance, but at some point they cleared its range, and it stopped tailing them. Although it kept firing potshots at them, but Hunk’s piloting and Yellow’s armor mitigated its success. That might have been fine, if a mechanical spider didn’t crawl up out of a side canyon and start chasing them.

“How many of these things are there?”

Hunk opened a line to the Castle. “Allura, status report. We’re in the Yellow Lion, but we’re being pursued. Allura?”

“I’m here. We’re having similar difficulties. I’m sending coordinates to you. Get in the hangars and I’ll open the teladuv and fly the Castle through.”

“Do you need backup?”

“No, Shiro and Keith have reached their lions and are addressing the problem. Lose your pursuer and fly home. Allura, out.”

“Hunk, no ramming.”

“Duh, I’m not an idiot. Spiders can’t fly, so up, up, and away.”

Yellow shot towards the sky climbing through the atmosphere until Pidge could see the stars and the black of space. The Castle glimmered in the sky like a star. Particle barrier activated the defenses were firing at a large, black owl with a white face covered in the blue Attaleian script. The Black and Red Lions darted in and out from the ‘bot harrying it from different sides. The Black Lion attacked with jaw blades, and Red seared its prey with its fire ray.

Hunk angled the Yellow Lion toward the fight. “All in favor of a suppressive fire strafing run?”

“Go for it.”

“Yeah, I think they had an even weirder time then we did,” Pidge added.

Hunk alright. “S-foils locked into attack position.”

“Hunk,” Lance groaned.

“What? You’ve been quipping for the past two days. It’s my turn now. Black Leader, Red 4, this is Yellow 2.”

“Hunk?” Keith said.

“Incoming strafing fire.”  The Yellow Lion sent out a burst of laser fire as it roared passed the furball. The owl flinched back, spreading its wings wide, and Keith took the opportunity to hit its chest dead center. Hunk cheered as they shot past. “You’re all clear, Kid. Let’s blow this thing, and go home.”

 “Great shot, kid. That was one in a million,” Shiro said. His humor bled across the open line.

Hunk gasped a huge grin spread across his face. “He punned.”

Yellow shot past the two Lions and headed for its home hangar. The Red and Black lions followed.

Hunk touched down lightly in the hangar and slumped in his chair. “Ugh, that was horrible. Let’s never go back there again.”

“I agree,” Lance added. “Huge waste of time. I don’t care how big or awesome that library is. It’s not worth the trouble.” He glanced over at Pidge and frowned. “Come on Pidge, what are you doing? It’s time to head back to the Infirmary.”

“No.”

“No? How is that headache of yours?”

“Horrible, but I can’t go back to the healing wing. They’ll put me back on bed rest, and I’ll go crazy from the boredom.” She scowled and pulled out her hard won data crystal. “Besides, I want to see what’s on this thing.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

Pidge scooted over and placed it on one of the Yellow Lion’s cockpit screens. The crystal sparkled, and a window popped up.

“Ooh, someone left a message,” Pidge said, and tapped the screen. “I wonder what it says.”

Hunk leaned forward. “It looks like a video file? Or maybe a holo recording? Whatever it is, it looks corrupted. It might take time to decode.”

Pidge nodded. “Cool, I’ll work on that. You guys should go wash up, maybe make some real food.”

“No, Pidge. Look, Coran and Shiro are in the hangar. They’re probably worried about all of us.”

Pidge crossed her arms and stared them down. “I’m not going. I refuse to be hovered over again.”

Hunk sighed. “Pidge, it’s—“

“No.”

“You need to—,”

“No.”

“We just—”

“What to help you,” Lance said. “We’re your friends, right?”

She squinted at him and tilted her head. “Yeah.”

“And friends look out for each other.”

“Yeah.”

“So how about a compromise.” He gestured over to Hunk. “You head to the infirmary with me. I think I banged my knee against something during our great escape. I want Coran to look at it. Come with me, and Hunk will sneak in later, and we can work on decrypting the message then.”

“Why?”

Lance pulled off his helmet and ran his hand through his hair. He looked Pidge in the eye and took a chance. “Because you’re my friend, Pidge. I screwed up two weeks ago and you were injured. I want to make sure you’re ok. And if the only way to get you to let Coran fuss over you means Hunk and I covertly help you subvert medical orders, then fine. Friends look out for each other. They sneak out after curfew, check out alien crash sites, and bizarre energy readings in the middle of the desert.”

“And get sucked into an intergalactic war between an endangered alien race and the dominant universal superpower while piloting magical morphing robot cats,” Hunk added. “But yeah, we’re friends. If the only way to get through recovery means sneaking in your laptop and stuff, sure.”

Pidge looked at both of them, then bit her lip. “I don’t know where my laptop is. I’m going to need it for working on the decryption, but I don’t _remember_ where I left it,” she admitted.

Lance glanced at Hunk, who shrugged. “I think before your concussion you were working on extending the Green Lion’s cloaking time? And you wanted to run some numbers on your laptop? I’ll check inside Green, and I’ll even drag Lance along to help. Deal?”

Pidge looked between the two and then out the window into the hangar. Keith and Allura had joined the waiting party, and yep, there was stretcher down there.

“Get rid of the stretcher and find my laptop, and it’s a deal.”

Hunk perked up like a sunflower at noon, and Lance let out a relieved chuckle.

“Alright, time to face the worrywarts. What do you say, Hunk? I’ll clutch my knee and cry, oh the pain and agony, and you can sneak Pidge off to Shiro. That’ll keep Coran busy, and Allura might be impressed by my bravery and battle wounds.”

Pidge snorted. A familiar fond exasperation settled in at Lance’s antics. “If you say so Lance.”

The three headed out towards the hangar. Lance slung an arm around Hunk’s neck and practiced his limp. Pidge trailed behind.

“I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but thanks for being my friends, guys.”

“Anytime, Pidge. Anytime. Ready Lance?”

“Born ready.”

The two headed down the ramp, and Lance started groaning and grimacing. Pidge hovered by the exit taking in the sight.

Those two were idiots. But they were her idiots. Her friends.

…

_Task List: Decode scrambled message with Hunk and Lance._


End file.
